What if the life you knew was based on a lie? How can bumping into someone change a life?
Chloe knows that she was adopted when she was three years old. She has had a great life - loving parents, a great home, but all of that is challenged when her parents get divorced and she and her mother move to Joyful, Texas. Angry at her father one day, she storms into a convinced store and runs (literally) into Cash Colton, you instantly believes she is running a con.
Dusting that encounter off, Chloe is rattled when she sees Cash again at her new high school. It's a she notices him, he is eyeing her type of budding relationship. Cash has a story himself - he spent a portion of his life in foster care. His foster parents love and adore him and would like for him to be a permanent member of their family.
Things sound like they should be rosy and fine for this pair of teens but Chloe is dealing with having with her parents separation, her mother's health, and being a parentified child. Cash is dealing with guilt, feelings of inadequacy and shame over the life he led with his biological father. Another thing nagging Cash is that Chloe looks exactly like his foster parent's kidnapped daughter!
This book is dubbed as a teen thriller. I would say it's YA with a little bit of thrill thrown in. I liked the questions this brought up. What if you learned your whole life was a lie? What if you thought you knew a secret and if you divulged that secret, lives would be changed? How do you cope with loss? Who do you handle grief? How does loss and grief affect not only a person individually but also the family unit as a whole?
I found this book to be a fast read which sucked me into the characters lives right away. I quickly cared about the main characters (mainly the teens) and also enjoyed their romance. Their reactions, emotions and thoughts felt real for someone in that age range (heck for most age ranges). I liked that there was just enough teen angst and nothing felt too over the top. Of course there were times where I thought, would the average teen do this? But in this book, where we dealing with the average teens? hmmm
This book dealt with various issues such as infertility, self esteem issues, kidnapping, adoption, foster families, loss, grief, illness, self blame, accountability, trust, young love to name a few.
I enjoyed this YA book and believe most teens and adults will enjoy this book. Again, I found it to be more YA young love than thriller but it worked for me. Will the reader guess some things - sure, but that did not hamper my enjoyment at all. The epilogue was nice and tied things up in a very tidy fashion.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press, C.C. Hunter, and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.