Synopsis: For Penny Lee, high school was a total nonevent. Her friends were okay, her grades were fine, and while she somehow managed to land a boyfriend, he doesn’t actually know anything about her. When Penny heads to college in Austin, Texas, to learn how to become a writer, it’s seventy-nine miles and a zillion light years away from everything she can’t wait to leave behind.
Sam’s stuck. Literally, figuratively, emotionally, financially. He works at a café and sleeps there too, on a mattress on the floor of an empty storage room upstairs. He knows that this is the god-awful chapter of his life that will serve as inspiration for when he’s a famous movie director but right this second the seventeen bucks in his checking account and his dying laptop are really testing him.
When Sam and Penny cross paths it’s less meet-cute and more a collision of unbearable awkwardness. Still, they swap numbers and stay in touch—via text—and soon become digitally inseparable, sharing their deepest anxieties and secret dreams without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other.
Shannon's review: 4/5 stars
For the most part I really enjoyed this book. I feel that this book is very realistic in today's technological world, where people frequently start a relationship on some form of social media or technological device. I liked that we as the reader got to see so much of the messages back and forth between Penny and Sam. I liked watching their relationship bloom in a different way than many of the other books I read. This being said I would have enjoyed a few additional scenes near the end of the book where they spent time in person.
I really enjoyed both Penny and Sam as characters because both have their far shares of struggles in life and this makes the characters relatable. Penny and Same both have difficult relationships with their mothers, due to having to be the adult in the relationship. Penny is nerdy and smart, always prepared, and introverted, she often gets "stuck" in her own head. Sam has a tough exterior but is fairly soft on the inside. Both seem to struggle with at least some anxiety, this was really relatable to me.
This book is a more of a slow burn, which is fine with me but I know some others struggle with. The one thing I did not like about this book was the ending. I felt that the ending was abrupt and I was left wanting to see a little more of Penny and Sam's relationship.
Sarah's review: 3/5 stars
I liked the format of this book a lot. It bounced between regular text and text messages, and I always love to see unique formats in a book. The author is a really talented author, and I definitely want to read other books by her!
I liked both of the main characters in this book a lot. I think they both had really interesting back stories and lives. However, no matter how much I liked the characters it wasn't enough to pull the plot along with it. This book is a SLOOOOOOOW BURN. Really slow. Usually I am okay with a slow burn, but I think what made this slow burn difficult was that so much of their friendship was through text. I think texting so much took away from the connection Sam and Penny had.
Overall this book was very average, but I wouldn't not recommend it.
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