Review :: If There’s No Tomorrow :: Jennifer L Armentrout

 

I’m not ashamed to admit that this was a total cover-lust pick up for me!

From Jennifer Armentrout’s webite:

The story didn’t quite end up being my cup of tea – perhaps because of the way it puts you right inside a teenage girl’s head (not somewhere I really want to spend time!), and also the fact that I found myself siding with the parents, or a bit frustrated with how the protagonist behaved. I also wasn’t quite sure how I felt about the Sebastian and how she feels about him storyline – to be honest I found him a bit controlling or something some of the time?

However, I can definitely see how a different reader, or a younger reader (or maybe even a younger me?) would have a reading experience to me. I felt like there were some pretty heavy issues that are important for teens and handled well, like….

• peer pressure and the consequences of decisions (with decision-making comes responsibility!)
• the importance of looking out for each other, and how sometimes when a tragedy happens everyone might have a little part in it
• how what we see when we look at other people is different to how they are seeing themselves (and vice versa too) – we can be our own worst critics, and others aren’t likely to be as hard on us as we are on ourselves (and we aren’t as hard on others as we are on ourselves). Does that make sense? It’s my favourite lesson for us to learn – that we are not alone in how we feel about ourselves, and basically no one has any idea what they are doing (haha)

Personally, I think I would have preferred a bit more subtlety in the way that some of the issues were addressed – I found the trauma and emotion  really blunt and in my face, which made for a pretty uncomfortable read. But, as I say above, I’m not necessarily quite the main audience, and I do think there are a lot of important issues touched on – it could also provide a good opening for discussing some of these issues. Also, in case it isn’t obvious, there’s some pretty trigger-y stuff in here, so if that is a concern for you please make sure you find out more before you start.