Some beautiful, lyrical prose about love and loss and growing up. It had some great lines and great emotions. It's a little too Bohemian love story for my taste, but the characters were lovable and quirky and I liked them anyway. (On a side note, if I have to read one more story about a teenage girl whose favorite book is Wuthering Heights and she's read every classic out there, I'm going to poke my eyes out. Okay, the Wuthering Heights obsession worked on Lennie, but it would have worked better if every other author hadn't already used it, and I would have liked it more if she hadn't read every other classic that most adults are still trying to get through and think that Love in the Time of Cholera was beautiful. Okay, I'm glad I got that out of my system.)

About halfway through the novel I felt this discord with what the story was saying and what I think Nelson wanted the story to say. According to Lennie's narrative, love is sex. Not that the story is filled with sex, gratefully, but the way she falls in love is all about the physical. When Lennie is falling head over heels, not once did I get a description of how lover boy made her feel special or how adorable he was because he was kind and perceptive or what an amazing musician he was. Every time it was Lennie not thinking about super-amazing, drop-dead-gorgeous guy and then all of a sudden she sees him and remembers how gorgeous he is and she has to have him. Or they start kissing and all of a sudden her life revolves around him. I think Nelson wanted to show that Lennie was so caught in love that she went cloud-nine crazy, but I didn't get the falling in love with a soul part. I only got the falling in lust with a hot guy part.

Maybe it would have helped if I were caught up in how amazing lover boy was, but what stood out for me were the bad-boyfriend red flags. That "you ever cross me and I will never speak to you again, no chance to explain or apologize" lack of forgiveness is volatile no-trust ground in a relationship. I understood why he was that way, but it kind of scared me. And the way he sought out what would be most hurtful and revengeful when he was angry turned me off the most. When things were good, he was a happy little ray of sunshine, but I personally didn't think he was very boyfriend-worthy to a girl going through so much grief. He had the qualities to be the kind of broken you want to protect (like Lennie) or the musical genius so caught up in his art you want to absorb him (like Lennie too), but these characteristics weren't developed enough to stand out above the passion that didn't sit right with me. Other girls may like him, but he's not my favorite romantic catch.

In the end, Lennie is the one who makes this story shine. After all, it is her story. She is so vivid and heartbroken and lovable that you feel for this loss she's going through. While her boyfriend's passion didn't resonate with me, Lennie's did. The poems she scatters through her day, the vulnerability of her music, the want to be as passionate as Catherine and Heathcliff. She is so very intense teenage girl, full of sadness and beauty and the weight of grief.