What's a girl to do when her life is laid out for her? Fall in love with the wrong person and throw life as you know it into a tizzy, of course! Madelyn Hawkins is (supposedly) a super-smart sixteen-year-old on a special fast-track program through her highschool at the local college. If all goes according to plan, she'll be done her AA degree by the time she's eighteen. On her first day of her college classes, she meets Bennett...thus begins her rapid decent into an obsessive, lovesick, naive and illogical spiral.
We know from the get-go that the romance is ill-fated. Knowing the basic premise of the book (16 yr old girl and her professor have a love affair), we know that there can be no good ending. What I didn't expect is that there was no really great content, either. The book is written in the form of letters from Madelyn to Bennett. These letters, however, read less like personal letters (intentionally?) and more like a long, in-depth witness statement. Some parts were personal but other parts were much too narrated (in my opinion).
The story is essentially Madelyn recounting every part of her affair with Bennett. I didn't really get why the first letter was addressed to Bennett but was seemingly written for a bigger audience (rather than for solely Bennett). I get the whole idea that she wrote the first letter with the intention of clearing Bennett's name if he had been arrested but I think that added some confusion. She did write a second letter that was intended for Bennett alone but I think the novel would have fared better had it been written as one whole journal entry (or something along those lines) vs a series of personal letters.
I felt that as the series of letters went on, Madelyn's character annoyed me more and more. For the smart-as-heck character she's supposed to be, she's pretty dumb. I don't get how a smart girl lacks the logic that the relationship can't go anywhere...period. There's no way around it and there was no way it would have ever worked out--she knew that, yet, let her fantasy go on. Makes no sense. I guess I do agree--"smart girls aren't supposed to do stupid things.” I found the book a bit difficult to get through because it just didn't make sense to me. The more I read, the more I found myself going, "but...!!" I suppose, however, a story on a topic like this isn't meant to be like the typical romance novel...but I'll leave you to form your own thoughts on that!
Kindle edition of The Truth About You & Me will be available on amazon.ca September 1, 2013!
(Paperback edition will be available at your local bookstore September 8, 2013)
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