This book starts off with a girl named Libby who is peacefully drawing in a field in rural Wisconsin (where the author is from). Libby finds her solitude by being creative and away from her horrid Aunt’s house an eye shot away. Then it happens: a family pulls up in this big huge bus to stay for a bit of a vacation away from the city. Libby is shy and keeps to herself and likes it that way. She has a huge chip on her shoulders that has her focus on survival rather than making friends. At first, the family does not notice her until one of the three brothers – Peter – introduces himself to her and her life changes forever.
Both lead characters start off young (Libby – age 16, Peter – age 17), which, of course, you think teenage love right? But when you read the story you see what grownup lives they have to lead and how they are dealing with the cards they were dealt. I really liked Libby, she started off very shy and timid, but really grew and made very mature decisions in her life in order to survive. I really was hating her aunt, who would verbally and mentally abuse Libby every chance she got, I so wanted Libby to tell on her then.
“Watch you mouth, little girl. I’m all you’ve got left in this world, and you’d be ill-advised to screw this up too.”
This was said after she found out that her aunt was hiding something very personal of hers. After this, she finally tells someone about what has been going on in that house. I just wanted Libby to slap her then. I don’t want to give away the book, so that’s all I will say about that part. Let’s just say that I wished she had done this sooner, but her fears got the better of her to keep her silent.
I do have to say that the Jamieson brothers reminded me of the Jonas brothers in their heyday. Very wholesome three man group with all this talent and supportive parents. I did not like Peter in the beginning of the book, but in the middle I wanted to yell “GROW A PAIR AND FIND HER!”, but that was no use – after all, this was a book I was talking about. Anyway, Peter is the oldest and has brothers that take the lead from him, and his relationship with Libby made them super jealous which makes them do something they all regret in the end. Which made me made at Garrett even more, because he caused all this drama.
“Libby supposed to be at home with her family enjoying life, not locked up in the foster system”
“She has no one, Mom, No one”
“I’m it. I was all she had and now she thinks I abandoned her, too!”
This was one of the times I thought he is going to just rip the cities apart to find her, but… I will let you read the book and find out what he ends up doing, but I would have liked him to have ripped the cities apart until he found her. But Peter did save himself in the end and finally found out where Libby was and went after her.
Overall, I felt the book was a very sweet YA book with an added bonus of showing young girls that you can survive even with all odds stacked against you, and I loved-loved-loved the fact that she did not need a boy or man to take care of her. The author made Libby wise in knowing not to only depend on someone to take care of you, but it was about balance in a relationship; and in the end, she was trying to work out that balance.
This is book one of the Jamieson Series. Below is the reading order of the books:
