Book: Take Me With You When You Go by David Levithan and Jennifer Niven
Read From: 19th January - 28th January 2022
Rating: 2/5 stars
Summary: Ezra wakes up one day to find his older sister, Bea, gone. No note, no sign, nothing but an email address hidden somewhere only he would find it. Ezra never expected to be left behind with their abusive stepfather and their neglectful mother - how is he supposed to navigate life without Bea? Bea already knew she needed to get as far away from home as possible. But a message in her inbox changes everything, and she finds herself alone in a new city - without Ez, without a real plan - chasing someone who might not even want to be found. As things unravel at home for Ezra, Bea confronts secrets about their past that will forever change the way they think about their family. Together and apart, broken by abuse but connected by love, this brother and sister must learn to trust themselves before they can find a way back to each other.
This book was… fine? I’m very conflicted. Whilst I liked its attempt to tackle serious and hard hitting topics like child abuse (big TW for this if you’re planning on reading!), I think the YA target market and the email format caused it to feel rather surface-level (plot and characters included).
The email formatting was definitely my biggest issue with this book, I honestly think I’d have preferred it were it told through dual POV instead. For example, the character backstories that were woven into the emails read really strangely and definitely didn’t seem like something a teenager would write in an email to their sibling. If it was done well, I probably could have got behind it but sadly it fell a bit flat for me.
As well as this, I felt like the characters were really undeveloped (also not helped by the formatting) and no mater what, I simply couldn’t find it in me to root for them and become invested. All of the character growth/development also felt really rushed into the ending too which definitely didn’t help. If this is how I felt about our main characters, you can only imagine how much I didn’t care about the side characters! There were also some really questionable relationships in this book, the only love interest I liked was Ezra’s boyfriend Terence but sadly he was one of these underdeveloped side characters.
Whilst I wouldn’t discourage anyone from trying this book, it’s not one that’s made a lasting impact on me in any way or one that I’ve thought about any more since finishing. I definitely think I’m starting to appreciate YA contemporaries less and less these days, so maybe that’s on me. This book was pretty unmemorable for me, but if it seems like you’d enjoy it I’d still suggest giving it a go.