17290266Title: The Infinite Moment of Us

Author: Lauren Myracle

Publisher: Amulet Books

Publication Date: August 2013

Genre: Young Adult Fiction/Contemporary

Series or Stand Alone: Stand Alone

Synopsis can be found here.
I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Review:

For her whole life, Wren feels like she has lived to please her parents. Her opinions, her decisions, everything has been more parents than Wren herself. At the moment, she barely knows what she likes and what she doesn’t. But then a split decision and she’s derailed all of her decisions to be adventurous. To go somewhere new. Exciting. To help. And to find herself. Graduation is here and Wren is ready to live her own life.

Enter Charlie, a boy with a sad and troubled past. He’s been in love with Wren forever, but has never known what to say. And then, the summer after graduation, all of that changes. Wren is open to new possibilities. Charlie is ready to make a move. And first love blooms between them. But will everyone else let them be together?

Cover Love! The synopsis got my attention too, but not before this beautiful cover was displayed over the Internet. I love the colors, the whimsical lettering and the couple in shadows. On the brink of something.

Now for the book.

I really liked Wren and Charlie. They are both fully developed, struggling teenagers, ready to start something but not sure what that is. And not sure what it all means. I loved Wren’s character as she built up her courage and her awareness. She opened up to Charlie, defied her parents and started to become her own person. There were a few times that the adolescence was a little too dramatic, but it fit Wren’s character perfectly. She is so sheltered that everything is new and different so of course she is going to overreact. Charlie is strong and sturdy, but also sad. I loved his loyalty to Wren and his family, his stubbornness and I even felt bad for him about his ex-girlfriend. How can you turn your back on someone who is just as broken as you are? Charlie’s actions, while unpopular, did speak volumes for his character.

The books is a slow, sweet love story. If you read the Author’s Note at the beginning, yes the book does include sex, so most readers should be warned this is for an older YA crowd. I happened to really love the scenes between them. Yes, it was passionate and sweet but also held the urgency and frenzy of young first love, the excitement and overall wonder of physically loving someone else, and allowing them to love you back. Also, I’m not terribly offended by sex in YA books. (Some teenagers have sex. Some teenagers don’t. Either way doesn’t make the characters more or less real for me.)

There were a few things that bothered me with the pacing. I do think it moved too slowly at times, and like I said above, Wren’s immaturity and outbursts did grate me once or twice. Tessa, her best friend, was what a good best friend should be, outspoken and smart. But there wasn’t a lot to her, or her boyfriend. The secondary characters seem flat and uninteresting. Same with the plot. I know it’s a love story, a character story, but a few times I felt like there wasn’t enough momentum in the story, not enough to push me into late night reading.

I have not read Lauren Myracle’s other book Shine, but I hear it’s good. I am going to check it out. However, the writing style was a bit distracting for me in this book. To me, it seems simplified and young, but that’s the style and I think you either like it or you don’t. Make no mistake – it is easy to tell Myracle is a talented writer.

Overall, I enjoyed The Infinite Moment of Us. And I think an older YA crowd will too.

Rating 6 Good