Honestly, I don't see why so many people love this book. Yes there's some intrigue, but it was just so cheesy and cliché. It was very fast paced and I definitely got a John Green vibe from it, but the five different stories failed to deliver. I came out of this book feeling like I could have gone the rest of my life without reading this book and I wouldn't have been any different.
The first part of the book is told from Hudson's point of view. He's a mechanic and his father wants him to become a doctor. He has an interview with a college to get a scholarship so that he can get into a good college. Cue manic pixie dream girl (aka Leila), add some insta love and you can probably guess most of Hudson's story. From the very beginning I knew where this was heading and I kept thinking that maybe there will be a twist, but unfortunately I was wrong.
Bree's story was a little more interesting, but it still didn't do it for me. She's been traveling around by herself since she had a falling out with her sister. Leila meets her randomly and they end up doing all sorts of illegal things. After finding out a little about Bree's past, it also wasn't that hard to see where her story was going.
The next story was probably my least favorite. Elliot is in love with his best friend Maribel and he confessed his love for her, but she rejected him. His solution is to get drunk and that's when Leila runs into him. They spend the entire night trying to figure out how to win Maribel over. While I was reading I kept thinking that it isn't the end of the world if she doesn't like him, so Elliot needs to stop behaving that way.
I think that Sonia was my favorite character, but her story was ridiculous. When she meets Leila, she's trying to get away from Jeremiah for awhile and they end up driving out of Canada. Little does she know, the rings for her dead boyfriend's sister's wedding are in the jacket she took from Jeremiah. When she realizes this, they try to get back into Canada, but Sonia lost her passport and they won't let Leila back in since she just crossed the boarder. The things they do to try and get back would have been funny, if they had been slightly more realistic.
Finally, Leila's reasons for going on this trip are revealed and honestly they weren't that shocking. Definitely sad, but I didn't think that anything good would have caused her to go on this trip. It was very difficult to connect with Leila throughout the stories, mostly because she didn't seem real. She would have this great insight into other people's lives that made her seem way older than she actually was and it wasn't realistic at all because no one her age would have the experience to know how to solve other people's problems or give advice like she did.
I think the fact that each character's story was about 100 pages or less, made it really difficult to develop them and for me to become invested in each one's story. It wasn't a horrible story, but it also wasn't what I was hoping it would be.
5
