The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. SmithMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The Geography of You and Me is a quiet and sweet story of two teens who meet in a stalled elevator in the middle of a city-wide blackout. Despite the fact that they are in a fancy high-rise apartment building, they come from very different backgrounds. Lucy is a life-long New Yorker and the child of an international banker, and she is frequently left alone as her parents travel for business and pleasure. Owen is a recent New York transplant, and the son of the building's super - a man so deep in grief at his wife's recent death that he is at risk of losing everything around him. Lucy and Owen are caught in travels out of their control - Lucy across Europe following her father's promotions through different positions, and Owen supporting his dad as they move gradually westward looking for a job a stability. After their brief sojourn during the blackout, the two communicate with postcards and emails as the travel, and a romance blossoms - but a romance hard to sustain when faced with obstacles and other attractions in their respective geographies. This is the first book I have read by Jennifer E. Smith, and I was impressed by the flow of her prose, especially when she was writing in Owen's voice. The mirroring of the chapters was a bit cloying sometimes, but I accepted the style as showing that despite how different Lucy and Owen's lives were, their paths and lives were not all that different after all. As I mentioned in the beginning, this is a quiet tale - there is no big drama - but sometimes quiet tales are exactly what we need.
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