Title: The A to Z of You and Me
Author: James Hannah
Publication: May 3, 2016
Publisher: Sourcebooks Publisher
Genre: Contemporary Literature
Pages: 336
SYNOPSIS: (From Goodreads)
He has all kinds of everyday joy in his life — he’s young, he’s in love, he has friends who promise to stand by him if life ever goes wrong.
Then one day, life does go wrong.
He makes a mistake, and it’s big and unforgiveable. Now time is running out, and his life is falling apart. But he’s going to put it back together again. His own way.
This is a story about how far love must stretch to gather a life in pieces — and about how a strong friendship never dies.
REVIEW:
*A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.*
The description of “The A to Z of You and Me” sounded right up my alley. It sounded like it was going to be a story of struggle and hope and learning to deal with things that life has dealt you. Unfortunately this book did not delivery for me in those areas.
I want to start by saying the idea for this story was great. Someone who has been dealt a semi-midlife bad hand and is now looking at all the great things of life before to brighten his days. The problem I had is that the synchronicity of this story was not there. There were a lot of transitions from present day to different times in the lead characters past and they didn’t transition well at all. To be completely honest, I was totally and 100% confused while reading. I never could get my mind wrapped around a specific timeline before the author jumped to the next. So while I have the jist of the story, I kept trying to read and clarify things, but only found myself getting worse. So for what I believe is the third or fourth time in history for me I wasn’t able to even finish the entire book because of the lack of flow. I couldn’t get a grasp for the story and was so confused that by halfway through the book I still didn’t understand what it was even fully about. The transitions needed to be much smoother and the introduction to the book more clear on where we were and what was happening when the book first started.
Even with being unable to finish the book because of the confusion and the inconsistent and choppy transitions, I still stuck with two stars instead of one because the idea behind the book was a good one and the parts that I did read while the main character was in hospice care were well written and I really enjoyed a few of the side characters. Unfortunately that was not enough to bring the star rating up. I will always give an author another chance, so I’ll check out James Hannah’s next book and I do encourage everyone to try the book out for themselves. just because I’m not a fan doesn’t mean you won’t be. From me, two stars for “The A to Z of You and Me”.
I encourage you to make your own opinion of this book by picking up a copy. Get a digital copy instantly by Amazon and Barnes and Noble. You can also add it to your To Reads list on Goodreads and leave your own feedback for the author when you are finished.
