This review contains affiliate links, which earn me a small commission when you click and purchase, at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my small business and allowing me to continue providing you a reliable resource for clean book ratings.
Book Synopsis:
Adam Moynihan’s life used to be awesome. Straight As, close friends and a home life so perfect that it could have been a TV show straight out of the ’50s. Then his oldest brother died. Now his fun-loving mom cries constantly, he and his remaining brother can’t talk without fighting, and the father he always admired proved himself a coward by moving out when they needed him most.
Jolene Timber’s life is nothing like the movies she loves — not the happy ones, anyway. As an aspiring director, she should know, because she’s been reimagining her life as a film ever since she was a kid. With her divorced parents at each other’s throats and using her as a pawn, no amount of mental re-editing will give her the love she’s starving for.
Forced to spend every other weekend in the same apartment building, the boy who thinks forgiveness makes him weak and the girl who thinks love is for fools begin an unlikely friendship. The weekends he dreaded and she endured soon become the best part of their lives. But when one’s life begins to mend while the other’s spirals out of control, they realize that falling in love while surrounded by its demise means nothing is ever guaranteed.
My Review:
4.5/5 stars. Every Other Weekend is a heartbreaking and heartwarming story with great, complex characters and a very cute romance. It is also very well written; it’s not overly flowery, but beautiful when necessary. While a lot of the side characters don’t have any depth, the main characters are great. I’d never read anything by this author before, but I’m interested to possibly read more from her in the future.
The romance between Adam and Jolene is super cute! It’s somehow insta-love and slow burn at the same time. They’re attracted to each other right away and flirt all the time, but the relationship still takes a long time to develop. It’s very realistic in that way. I also loved all their banter and how they go out of their way to do things for each other.
The side characters, on the other hand, lack depth. It felt like most of them, with the exception of family members, exist just to interact with the main characters and don’t have their own personalities.
I really enjoyed the ending of this book. It’s heartwarming and made me smile, but in a sad way. Things become more positive for the characters, but only because they couldn’t get much worse than they were before. Everything is wrapped up nicely, but still a few things are left open-ended.
Finally, the author writes a lot of great and kind of poetic lines. They aren’t so flowery that they distract from the story, but the occasional nugget is nice.
Rated: Moderate. Moderate language is used occasionally; lots of kissing described in some level of detail, a depiction of sexual assault, discussions of an affair that ended a marriage; a character is an alcoholic and is visibly very drunk in some scenes; a character has an abusive father and it’s mentioned that he has bruises from it; two characters beat up another character.
Click here to purchase your copy of Every Other Weekend on Amazon.
