My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Jamie hasn’t had the most cheerful of upbringings. Having lost both her parents in a car accident when she was ten, she is brought up by her Aunt and Uncle. Neither of whom have been particularly loving. At 18 she moves into college, and with her new friendships, she not only grows up, but grows to accept who she is. She studies hard, and although she’s always been independent, learns that she can be both strong on her own, and with the help of the people who love her. Regardless if those people are blood relatives.
This was a fairly well-told story; the odd spelling error aside, which completely changed the grammar in a few places (but you can easily figure out what the sentence was supposed to say). The student-teacher friendship could easily have strayed into inappropriate-territory, and I was pleased to find that this was not the case. Although if such a friendship had struck up in reality, I’m fairly certain that someone on the outside would start asking *those* questions. Because people always think the worst and jump to conclusions, before seeing good intentions (and I’ll admit to jumping there myself before reading further!).
As a coming-of-age story, this was a nice and pleasant tale. The characters of Jamie, Scott and Drew were well thought out, Duncan less so (but he was written to be a superficial personality, so perhaps that was the point). The reader is asked to evaluate the difference between a perfect life, and a happy one. And as for me, happy always trumps perfect.
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Crown Jules Presents 