Roger Hyttinen

Blurb:

Stevie Rosenstein has never made a true friend. Never fallen in love. Moved from city to city by her father’s unrelenting job, it’s too hard to care for someone. Trust in anything. The pain of leaving always hurts too much. But she’ll soon learn to trust, to love.

Twice.

Drew and Shane have been best friends through everything. The painful death of Shane’s dad. The bitter separation of Drew’s parents. Through sleepaway camps and family heartache, basketball games and immeasurable loss, they’ve always been there for each other.

When Stevie meets Drew and Shane, life should go on as normal.

But a simple coin toss alters the course of their year in profound and unexpected ways.

Told in dual timelines, debut author Jennie Wexler delivers a heartbreaking and hopeful novel about missed opportunities, second chances, and all the paths that lead us to where we are.

Review:

The story, told in dual timelines, follows two best friends and musicians, Drew and Shane, who make all their decisions by flipping a coin. When a new girl named Stevie shows up at school (also a musical prodigy), they both want to ask her out. So they decide who will pursue Stevie romantically and who will step aside by doing what they always do to make a decision: tossing a coin. What’s interesting about this story, however, is that the first part of the book shows us the result if Drew wins, and the second part portrays the result if Shane wins the toss and how differently the events play out in each situation. The first and second halves are not at all repetitive as the events in the timeline don’t occur the same way the second time around.

The story illustrated how one small decision can change the trajectory of our entire lives and how such a decision branches off into many other ones, thus altering our life in unforeseeable ways. In this way, I found the story to be exceptionally thought-provoking. It causes us to wonder how much of what happens to us is really left to chance and how much is the result of a past decision. I thought it also illustrated how we often can’t really predict or even control the incidents in our lives.

What this really brought home for me is the importance of the choices that we make — and well as those we don’t make — and how those choices affect others in our life. It’s the kind of story that leaves the reader questioning at the end (but in a good way).

Where It All Lands is an exceptionally compelling read that’s not only gripping but kind of heartbreaking in places (the story opens during a scene of a funeral — and we don’t find out whose funeral it is until much later in the book). Readers who go into this expecting a fluffy YA romance may be disappointed as it’s more of a sci-fi speculative story with a romantic undercurrent.

Additionally, there are many hard-hitting themes in the book, such as bullying, challenging family dynamics, parental abandonment, divorce, death, and grief. Hence, parts of the story were pretty heart-wrenching. And though there is undoubtedly a romance aspect to the story, I feel that at its core, the theme of friendship is at the forefront of the narrative.

All in all, I found Where It All Lands to be a riveting coming-of-age journey about the “what-ifs” in our life and feel that it’s well worth the read.

A huge thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an advanced reader copy of this book.

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It often takes me quite a while before I get into a book, but the utterly compelling central character in this one sucked me right in. The writing flowed so well that I was deeply immersed in the story before I knew it.

The novel is told from the point of view of Dane, a senior in high school, who is overcome with grief after the death of his father from cancer one year prior. To add insult to injury, his mother began dating his father’s former business partner and best friend Chuck shortly after the funeral, which Dane sees as not only disrespecting his father but also her forgetting him and moving on.

Additionally, Chuck’s “evil” son, Eric, seems to delight in tormenting Dane. To help him deal with his depression (and his new family dynamic), his mother has shuffled him through a plethora of therapists, most of whom have proven ineffective.

Dane is also infatuated with Ophelia, the girl next door who he believes is way out of his league. This is despite the fact that she seems to be regularly dropping odd, almost flirtatious hints that only manage to confuse him further.

What we end up with then is an in-depth character study of a complex young man who has a difficult time coping with life and communicating with the people who are close to him. In the process, he is searching for answers to some pretty tough questions while trying to maintain his sanity through it all. Through that process, the novel examines some pretty hard-hitting themes such as grief, depression, suicide, first love, relating to others, lack of parental support, insecurity, and the meaning of life. It also looks at the pain, difficulty, and at times, anguish in simply growing up.

Though there are certainly some dark and weighty topics in the novel, the author does a brilliant job of balancing them out with plenty of humor, wit, and banter. Dane is quite a sarcastic and amusing character, and I enjoyed getting to know him as the story progressed. His comments caused me to cackle out loud on more than a few occasions. I especially loved seeing his transformation from heartbroken and overwhelmed to stepping up and taking control of his life.

But at its core, this is an intense coming-of-age story about grief and figuring out how to cope. In this way, it ends up being poignant and heart-wrenching in many places. Simultaneously heartbreaking and heart-mending, The Tragedy of Dane Riley is a poignant tale about finding oneself in the midst of chaos. This gem of a story is as thought-provoking and hopeful as it is emotional and sobering, and I enjoyed every single moment. I’ll definitely read more by this author.

A huge thank you to Netgalley & Wednesday Books for providing a review copy of this book.

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This is a contemporary YA story that follows three teens: twin brothers, Ellis and Tommy, and a girl named Harlow, who is best friends with Ellis but enemies with Tommy. A lot is going on here with these three characters: Harlow is determined to save her small hometown of West Finch from falling into the ocean, as it’s slowly getting was washed away by the town’s seasonal storms. One of the twins has lost a leg from an accident, and the other is bi. One of them suffers from crippling depression and attempts suicide, and the other ignores his problems, hoping they’ll disappear. One is a track star, the other an artist.

This was quite a riveting character study, even though I found all three of them mostly unlikeable, and their relationships are overall unhealthy. But the fact that each of them was extremely complex and multi-layered, however, kept me eagerly reading the story. The complicated and odd dynamics between them sucked me right in. There were also so many compelling themes in this story, such as the pain that results from knowing someone too well, a complicated love triangle, disability, nature conservancy, climate change, depression, the need to “fix” others, and being emotionally shut off from those around you. I did enjoy the conversation and realistic portrayal of depression/mental health issues in the story and thought the author handled them exceptionally well.

Now I will say that I was not a fan of the ending, though, and felt mostly unsatisfied when I finished the book. It was more of a “non-ending” than an ending. Still, I thought this was a compelling story and well worth the read. The novel’s small-town vibe really worked for me, especially the colorful secondary characters. Ending notwithstanding, I found this to be a moving and emotionally searing novel about the deep bonds of family and friendship that is well worth the read.

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