Synopsis: Life isn’t fair…and neither is death.
When seventeen-year-old Nebraskan, Rachel Sutton moves into her new home in Maine, she quickly discovers it is the former residence of Noah and Ethan Thompson, teenage brothers recently killed in car crash. Brothers who have yet to move on.
Ethan, spiteful and jealous, is obsessed with Rachel, and Noah, guilt-ridden and gorgeous, is trying to save his brother’s soul. As Rachel spends countless hours with Noah, and dates Parker Redding, a popular football player, she finds herself torn between her feelings for the living and the dead.
One fateful night, Rachel must choose. Will she embrace her life on earth with those who love her? Or find out what’s on the other side?
My question is: who would fall in love with a ghost? Because I know I wouldn’t, I’d be so freaking scared that I’d run away from them since minute one. But it’s okay, I can accept it, because without this premise this book wouldn’t exist.
Apart from this small and insignificant issue, the story is well developed for being a young-adult book. Though it has a lot of cliches, for example when the main character, Rachel, describes his boyfriend as “the hottest guy I’d ever had a date with”, and also repeats some things too many times, like when talking about her mother, Rachel says “especially since we didn’t know how many (mother-daughter moments) we might have” because her mother has cancer, she repeats this sort of thing at least 10 times throughout the story, and being it a more-or-less-250-pages book, it becomes a bit tiring sometimes.
Let’s talk about the characters now. They’re not really developed, but standing up for Sally White, they don’t have much time to evolve actually, since the story happens in a short period of time–nine months more or less–. It has to be said that what usually happens with a debut novel, especially if it’s a standalone, is that the author puts a lot of themselves in the main character, which I really like and enjoy. You’re able to know about what they like, what they carve for, a piece of what they’ve been through or about their environment. And in This Side of Tomorrow you can see that Sally White might love her mother a lot, that she may really like dancing and that she may have enjoyed her high school life, since all the characters are popular, hot and cool with everyone.
What I liked least about the characters was that they’re divided between good and bad, there’s no middle point, making it a bit difficult to believe their behaviours. For example, Parker and Noah are 18-years-old gentlemen, being kind and boyfriend goals. While Ethan is a 16-year-old evil ghost, obsessed with girls and especially Rachel, and (spoiler alert) literally in a second he becomes good, he realises that he’s screwed it all up and that he wants to be forgiven, making it possible for him to go to heaven–that’s a bit surreal.
What I didn’t like either was the fact that Ethan was suffering bullying in school, maybe a mild one, but he was, and nobody helped nor understood him. And after his death, his brother Noah tries to help him just because he feels guilty for his death and to be able to go to heaven–which is selfish as heck and for that same reason he should go to hell. What I’m trying to say is that Sally White should have developed this part of the story a bit more, making Rachel understand a bit Ethan’s behaviour and help him to be good, instead of refusing to talk to him, which makes him be even meaner to her.
But even all these things I still wanted to finish it, that thing caught me. And it might be because it’s a light and fast read, pretty well written and a bit original, since I haven’t read nor heard about a book with a love triangle conformed by two mortals and a ghost. It sounds interesting, doesn’t it? So if you’re into love triangles, paranormal romance and YA romance, you should give it a try because you might love it.
Thanks BookSirens for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Genre: young adult, paranormal romance.
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