I'll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

Title: I'll Meet You There
Author: Heather Demetrios
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication date:  February 3, 2015
Pages: 379
Source/format: Purchased/Hardcover

Rating: ☆☆☆

Synopsis (from goodreads.com):

If seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straightedge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom—that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she’s ever worked for is on the line. 

Nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell had a different ticket out of Creek View: the Marines. But after his leg is blown off in Afghanistan, he returns home, a shell of the cocksure boy he used to be. What brings Skylar and Josh together is working at the Paradise—a quirky motel off California’s dusty Highway 99. Despite their differences, their shared isolation turns into an unexpected friendship and soon, something deeper. 

My Thoughts:

I heard great things about I'll Meet You There. For some reason, I could not get into the book as much as I wanted to. The premise of the story sounds intriguing and I was super excited to have my hands on a copy of the book. Maybe I had high expectations about the book. Sometimes if a book is over hyped, I expect more from it. I am glad I give it a chance though. It is not a horrible book. It's maybe not a book for me.

The novel starts with a graduation party after a high school graduation ceremony. Skylar Evans is waiting around for Josh Mitchell. She is super excited that she graduated and she is college bound. However, life takes a turn and things get complicated. With Skylar's dad's death, her mother hasn't been herself. Her mother ends up losing her job and Skylar's dream of leaving Creek View becomes unreal. Josh comes back from Afghanistan not too long ago but with one less limb. He is trying to adjust to life but sometimes life is hard. People don't understand what he went through. They don't understand what he lost. Skylar and Josh have been working at the Paradise Motel for quite awhile. Although they both have their own problems, they are able to share something special between them.

What I like about this novel is how raw and honest the book is. There is no sugarcoating about how life is like for Skylar and Josh. Sure it may be something different than the "average" person's experience of life at age 18 or 19, but this is what life is for some. Not everyone is fortunate from birth or even when they are growing up. Things happen. Life happens.

I see the struggles of high school aged students everyday. I work with low-income and first-generation students. Some students are raised in broken homes, some lose a parent, some barely have enough food to eat everyday. Yet they strive to do something better for themselves. Sure, others may look down upon them for not having certain things. People can live without material things but living without a parent or working a lot in order to help support your family while in school is hard. You can't change that. Kids don't wish that upon themselves. Some of them wish to find a way out of where they live but sometimes it is impossible to leave.

But the reason why I couldn't get into the book is mainly because I couldn't connect to the characters as much as I wanted to. I have a grasp about what their situations are like but maybe it's the way that the novel was written. Some of the profanity can be toned down. There were times where I was bored. There were times I didn't want to finish the book. The book didn't hit me hard as I expected. I understand the content of the story can be uncomfortable to read at times but I have read books with difficult issues and I still felt more connected with the characters from other books. This is a book where you have to read it for yourself to decide whether you love it or not. So far I have not read one bad review about it and I don't want to deter others not to read it just because I didn't love the novel.