Return To Me

Author: Justina Chen
Goodreads Rating: 3.59
Pages: 352
Format: ARC from BEA12

Nothing is going as planned for Rebecca Muir. She's weeks away from starting college--at a school chosen specifically to put a few thousand miles of freedom between Reb and her parents. But her dad's last-minute job opportunity has her entire family moving all those miles with her! And then there's the matter of her unexpected, amazing boyfriend, Jackson, who is staying behind on the exact opposite coast.And if that isn't enough to deal with, mere days after moving cross-country, Reb's dad drops shocking, life-changing news. With her mother and brother overwhelmed and confused, Reb is left alone to pick up the pieces of her former life. But how can she do that when everything can change in an instant? How can she trust her "perfect" boyfriend when her own dad let her down? Reb started the year knowing exactly what her future would hold, but now that her world has turned upside down, will she discover what she really wants?Justina Chen, the acclaimed author of North of Beautiful, has created a moving and powerful novel about the struggles that arise from betrayal, the uncertainty of life after high school, and the joy that ultimately comes from discovering what's truly in your heart.

This book wasn't on my radar until my friend got it as part of her Power Readers pass at BEA. I'm really glad that I got to enjoy this book. The last few books I read caught me in some kind of a reading fog, but at this book, it seemed to be lifted. I was more invested in the characters and their plight.

This book held a few surprises and one of them was the "sixth sense" aspect of Reb's life, and how it seemed to impact the relationships around her. I wasn't expecting her to have this small ability to somewhat tell the future. Mostly her, I'll call it a skill since it really wasn't a power, skill would give her an intense feeling or something of the like. 

I liked that it was somewhat focused around her long distance relationship with her boyfriend Jackson. In the two hundred books that I have read this year, I think that this is the first where the relationship for the main character is long distance. I can understand why an author might do this, mostly because portraying this relationship can be hard both for the reader and the writer. I appreciated it thought because for the last 4 years, my relationship has been long distance, and so all of these thoughts and feelings that she had, I had at one point.

I loved that I came to hate Reb's father. I think that its a great thing when the author can make you come out with strong feelings toward a character. I almost felt like I was her friend and picking her side against what her dad was doing to his family. I didn't care how he justified it or how things worked out between him and Reb, what he did was awful and selfish.

I loved the characters and how they all worked in harmony through the book, the writing made it fast paced and something that helped to mellow me out on my way to my big kid job interview (which I got btw!). What didn't like was the super heavy handed symbolism that everything had. The first few times it was cute, by the middle of the book I was tired of it. Either way, it made for a great contemp read!

The Courts Decision: