Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult.

Publication Date: January 5th 2016 by Sourcebooks Fire.

Format: eARC from Sourcebooks Fire via Netgalley.

Bandmate, best friend or boyfriend? For Ramona, one choice could mean losing them all. 

Ramona and Sam are best friends. She fell for him the moment they met, but their friendship is just too important for her to mess up. Sam loves April, but he would never expect her to feel the same way–she’s too quirky and cool for someone like him. Together, they have a band, and put all of their feelings for each other into music.

Then Ramona and Sam meet Tom. He’s their band’s missing piece, and before Ramona knows it, she’s falling for him. But she hasn’t fallen out of love with Sam either.

How can she be true to her feelings without breaking up the band?

(from goodreads.com)

This was such a good book and I loved so much about it. Before I start with the praise, I’m going to mention the one thing that I didn’t like about it, and it’s the fact that not a lot happened. I just wish there had been a little more to the plot as a lot of events felt like they were repeated again and again and nothing new was introduced, with the exception of the development of the romance.

Talking of the romance, it was adorable. I was expecting a love triangle (*groans*) by the synopsis and the opening chapters. This was, for the most part, avoided, even when it seemed inevitable. I’m so happy about this, and it made the story much more interesting and enjoyable for me, as I’m really getting sick of love triangles (aren’t most people?!).

I loved the characters in this book as well. They were all individual and the author had given a lot of thought to their families as well, which was something that I picked up on and liked. Often characters in young adult books either have the generic loving family or broken, angry family, and nothing in between. Yet in this book I found that each set of parents was different and had their own way of acting and bringing their children up. There was a fairly strong focus on family throughout this book, in the way that the characters mention their parents a lot, whereas they are quite often ignored or rarely mentioned in a lot of YA books.

This was another book with multiple narratives, but it allowed me to understand what was going through the mind of each person, which is quite important to this storyline, as it would have been difficult to understand if you didn’t know how each character felt. I really enjoyed Nowlin’s writing style and thus it was a fun and easy read and I read it really quickly (I think it took me a day to read – maximum of two).

The outcome of this book is unlike anything I’ve read and I greatly appreciated this unique (and adorable) twist. I know that the outcome won’t be for everyone and some people may be uncomfortable with it, but if I’m honest I loved it as it highlighted something that people and society merely judge without understanding. The characters are allowed to sort themselves out without judgement and so it was good to see how they genuinely felt without the pressure of society, and none of them particularly care what others think anyway. I like discovering new things in books, and learning about things that I know very little about, and this book allowed me to learn a little more about the relationship featured (I’m not mentioning it because it’s kind of a spoiler).

This was such a cute read and I would recommend it as some light relief after a difficult book or in the summer especially. I can really see this being a great summer read for some reason – probably because I like light-hearted, fun books that I can read really quickly and easily without having to think too much! I know not much happens, which drags down its rating for me, but I loved the characters and I think that the characters are the most important part of a story and they make this story great.

Rating: 4 / 5 stars.