Housewife Blues and Chihuahua Stories

Book Info
Hardcover, 304 pages
Expected publication: May 5th 2015 by Sourcebooks Fire
ISBN 1402291507 (ISBN13: 9781402291500)
other editions (3)
Source:Netgalley EARC

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BOOK SYNOPSIS

WHAT IS NORMAL?

For Trevor, normal was fast guitar licks, catching game-winning passes, and partying all night. Until a car accident leaves him with no band, no teammates, and no chance of graduating. It’s kinda hard to ace your finals when you’ve been in a coma. The last thing he needs is stuck-up Everly Jenkins as his new tutor—those beautiful blue eyes catching every last flaw.

For Everly, normal was a perfect family around the dinner table, playing piano at Sunday service, and sunning by the pool. Until she discovers her whole life is a lie. Now the perfect pastor’s daughter is hiding a life-changing secret, one that is slowly tearing her family apart. And spending the summer with notorious flirt Trevor Lewis means her darkest secret could be exposed.

This achingly beautiful story about two damaged teens struggling through pain and loss to redefine who they are—to their family, to themselves, and to each other—is sure to melt your heart.

My Thoughts

Trevor was introduced in book 1 Boys Like You, which did not read but did not feel the lack as back story was pretty well covered to catch me up. I thought that the fit of he and Everly was a good one, they were both decent teens who had been dealt a losing hand in life due to no fault of their own.

The emotions of loss of self and feeling anger over another's actions was both realistic as well as heartbreaking to read about on behalf of these characters.

I am a fan of contemporary settings and situations for Young Adult stories and this one hits below the belt for me a couple of times for several reasons due to my own past experiences with the aftermath of damage done to friends who were in accidents either driving drunk or hit by a drunk driver themselves.

Believe me when I say they were truly, no pun intended, "sobering moments"!

Trevor is a typical teenage male, he has it all going for him until the fateful night when he and his best friend mistakenly get in a car while totally trashed. The resulting accident took this young man with the promising future and turned him into a young man who is unsure whether that future he dreamed about all his life even has a chance of becoming reality.

Everly is the pastor’s daughter, the girl who on the outside has the perfect family with the perfect house and yet she finds herself wishing that perfect life was real rather than the lie that she knows it to be.

At seventeen while their friends seem to have it all together Everly and Trevor find themselves losing the foundation of what had made them whole. Everly with the tension between her parents and an awful truth about her Dad that she does not want to face and Trevor with his recovery from his Traumatic Brain Injury not progressing as well as he had hoped these two have more than enough to deal with for a lifetime.

The way in which they handle their respective troubles though is what really makes the reader ache for them both, the two prove that healing takes time and effort but with help from someone who cares it is easier.

As the book blurb so eloquently put it this is indeed an achingly beautiful story.

[EArc from Netgalley in exchange for honest review]