For Penny Lee high school was a total nonevent. Her friends were okay, her grades were fine, and while she somehow managed to land a boyfriend, he doesn’t actually know anything about her. When Penny heads to college in Austin, Texas, to learn how to become a writer, it’s seventy-nine miles and a zillion light years away from everything she can’t wait to leave behind.
Sam’s stuck. Literally, figuratively, emotionally, financially. He works at a café and sleeps there too, on a mattress on the floor of an empty storage room upstairs. He knows that this is the god-awful chapter of his life that will serve as inspiration for when he’s a famous movie director but right this second the seventeen bucks in his checking account and his dying laptop are really testing him.
When Sam and Penny cross paths it’s less meet-cute and more a collision of unbearable awkwardness. Still, they swap numbers and stay in touch—via text—and soon become digitally inseparable, sharing their deepest anxieties and secret dreams without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other.
I found an ARC copy at my local used bookstore last month and was so excited to get my hands on it. I’m very against selling ARCs, so when I see them being sold at my used bookstore I like to buy them and usually read them. And then once I’m done reading them, either keep them or trade them. I bought this one and I am so happy I did!
Penny’s boyfriend, Mark is a high school senior who thinks that a relationship is all about sex and that’s it. Her mom, Celeste, wants to be her best friend but doesn’t know how to be her mom. Her roommate, Jude, is amazing and then we have Sam. Sam is living in the coffee shop he works at, his mom is a drunk, his dad isn’t in the picture and his life is at a standstill. Until the two meet and their whole worlds change.
I really loved this book. I loved getting to know Penny and Sam. Jude and her friends end up being a lot better than they were in the beginning of the story.
The story shed a whole new light on being homeless and class difference. Sam has nothing, no family and very few friends. It also does a great job talking about anxiety and depression from both characters ends.
One thing that stuck out to me and really made me love the story the whole through is the fact that neither of them try to fix the other. Both of them have their own struggles and they are there for each other, but they don’t think being in a relationship will help either of their struggles.
This book has a lot of character development, in almost every character in the book and it’s great to see that happen. I really loved this book and I recommend it to everyone.