Natalie’s Reviews > Beach Read > Status Update

“How are you supposed to believe right’s right and wrong’s wrong if everyone around you says the opposite? You’re supposed to think you’re smarter than all of them?”

“Sometimes—sometimes good, or at least decent, people do bad things. And sometimes they actually believe they’re doing what’s right.”

“I thought—think it’s brave to believe in love. I mean, the lasting kind. To try for that, even knowing it can hurt you.” “And what about you?” “What about me?”
“You don’t think you ever will again?”
“It doesn’t matter if I believe it can work or not,” he said. “Not believing in something doesn’t stop you from wanting it. If you’re not careful.”

“I didn’t want to feel these things. It wasn’t fun anymore, now that I was thinking it all through, where it would end up—with me attached and jealous and him having shared about as much about his life with me as you might with a hairdresser. But then he would say things like that.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time I was seeing through rose-colored glasses, assigning meaning where there was none. I was being stupid. After everything with my dad, I should have known better. I’d just barely started to heal, and I’d run right out and gotten a crush on the one person who was guaranteed to prove right every single fear I had about relationships. I needed to let this go.”

Relatable!

“I wasn’t mad at him. I couldn’t be. I was furious with myself for wandering down this path. I knew better.”

“And even if things had gone further that night, it wouldn’t have precluded him from disappearing for days.”

“I’d finally found a friend, someone I could talk to, who’d seemed to want to be around me as much as I wanted to be around him, and now he was just gone. Because we’d kissed.”

Relatable on so many levels…

“My world felt empty. Like there was no one in it, except sometimes Gus, and nothing in it except this book, and the bet. And no matter how much better this book felt than every iteration of it that had come in the last twelve months, it wasn’t enough. I was on a beautiful beach, in a beautiful place, and I was alone. Worse, I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop being alone again.”

“I needed to keep my head straight and eyes clear—no romanticizing allowed. As soon as things got complicated, Gus would be gone.”

The reality of liking someone nowadays…