The Geography of You and Me

What to say? I am a huge fan of this author, I would even go so far as to say that she is my favorite contemporary author and I just loved and adored this book just as much as I did her others and cannot wait for more from her. This book centers around two characters, Owen and Lucy, who after meeting one night in an elevator in the middle of a city wide black out move hundreds of miles away from each other, they both felt something that night but before they have a chance to understand what they are separated by vast distances. The book is told between the two characters POVs as they each go on their own adventures still somehow connected and defined by that one night that they spent looking at the stars. While they make half hearted attempts to keep in touch each one is afraid that the night meant nothing to the other and is afraid of being rejected and so they live their own lives and yet somehow they always come back to that one night, to the boy and girl stuck in an elevator. That night they asked each other the question if they could go anywhere in the world where would it be? For Owen it's everywhere and for Lucy somewhere, and that's what they do, traveling further and further apart and still always drawn to each other and that is how the story goes. I felt that this book was fairly realistic, I don't thins it was so much about a long distance relationship as kinda the absence of one. There was post cards and unanswered emails, but no promises to each other and for the most part no communication at all, it was more about how that one night changed them and stuck with them through everything. How one chance encounter in the middle of a blackout affected their lives, how even though they didn't talk for months and even though they really only knew each other for a handful of hours they still dreamed that something could come from this and it still changed their lives. Likes - The characters - I love Lucy and Owen so much not just together but apart too. Lucy is a bookworm and a loner, she loves her family but is used to her parents leaving her alone for days while they travel and her brothers are away at college and her story is allot about her reclaiming her family, mainly her mom, and learning that being with people can be just as good if not better than being alone. With Owen his mom just died and his dad and him are trying, basically, to outrun their grief, leaving their home behind and eventually just hitting the road and driving until they find somewhere to stop for a little while before moving on once more, I loved their relationship how they had to take care of each other and how for the most part they were all they had. Of course overall the most important thing is Owen and Lucy's relationship, if you can call it that, besides a few postcards and emails and one reunion that ends badly, they don't talk to each other throughout most of the book, it's about how they are without each other and realizing it's not crazy to feel this way after only one night of talking. It's about them finding their way back to New York and the possibility of that night and it's just so good. The traveling - I am a sucker for contemporaries with road trips and any kind of traveling and I liked that this book had so much of that. I loved the part about point zero the center of Paris the most and how they made their own point zero and it's just really good, okay? The writing - I love Jennifer's writing, it's beautiful and light hearted and I don't know..quotable? Seriously I highlighted like half of the book which I mean I do that allot but still! Dislikes - -I would have liked it if Lucy's brothers had actually been in the book, but that is really a small unimportant thing. -I wanted more postcards. I get the point was kinda not having the postcards and trying to move on and everything but still I loved the postcard thing and I wanted more! -That it ended? Overall - I love this book just as much as I love all of her others books that I have every read. If you loved Statistical Probability and/or Happy than I do believe you will love this one too. I know some people were disappointed in it but I honestly do not know why. In the end I really have no complaints about this book. It's fun and lighthearted, it's not something to read if you want to discover the secrets of the universe or have a good cry feast but to me it is the best kind of contemporary. It's a fairytale of sorts where you know there is not chance of it not ending in some kind of happily ever after and it was everything I wanted it to be and more. Characters I could love and root for, travel and adventure and family and love notes in the form of postcards, and I just completely loved it. See the playlist that goes along with the review here - [...]

If this were your average every day YA romance novel this is how the story would play out: Boy meets girl after being stuck in an elevator together. Despite coming from very different backgrounds the two immediately hit it off, realizing that their lives had not been complete until they met. Elevator is fixed, and the two find a way to remain together through thick and thin, through all that life throws at them to keep them apart. Despite distance separating the two, they spend all of their time communicating with each other and pining for each other in between. Sure, there are complications to keep things interesting, but the book ends with the two of them realizing that love conquers all. All problems are magically solved. Happily Ever After. The end. But this is not an average every day YA romance novel. Owen and Lucy do meet under an extraordinary circumstance of being stranded together in a New York City elevator. They form a connection to one another and spend an exciting night together on the building rooftop as New York City is darkened by a citywide power outage, leaving commuters stranded, buildings sweltering, and refrigerated food supplies dwindling. The evening has an almost magical quality to it, and both Lucy and Owen recognize this. But at this moment the novel turns away from the conventional YA path and heads off on a unique and much more realistic journey. Owen and Lucy are separated as Lucy heads to Scotland when her father's job is relocated, and Owen heads all over the place, eventually ending up on the west coast as his father, still reeling after the death of his wife, searches for a job, stability, and peace. At first Lucy and Owen exchange cute little post cards, and Lucy writes emails that are never answered. They both live their lives, finding new friends, forming romantic attachments to other people, and yet both feeling a pull toward one another at random moments as they are living these separate lives. They question whether the other even cared nearly as much about that magical night as the other. They feel awkward and unsure of themselves as they attempt to communicate in fits and stops throughout the novel. It is awkward at times. And much of the time nothing much at all is taking place between the two of them. All communication eventually stops for a time. But throughout it all they never forget the connection they felt that day in New York City. Figuring out what they want to do about these thoughts is half the battle in this story. I really loved how realistic this relationship is portrayed. In the three Jennifer E. Smith books I have read so far there is a common theme involving two random people meeting in somewhat extraordinary (or even extremely ordinary) circumstances ... two people in a world of billions who randomly meet and feel a spark ignite. In each of these books that connection is almost magical. But life isn't always so magical. Life is full of the everyday ordinary, and sometimes we just expect things to always be so average and ordinary that we neglect to notice those moments of magic, or when they do happen we are quick to dismiss them. That is what happens in this book. Lucy and Owen experience magic, but they get caught up in the ordinary, refusing to believe that the magic is what they deserve if they reach for it. It would have been lovely if the two of them could have spent the entire novel together learning more about each other as their love blossomed, but that wouldn't have been realistic. Seeing the two find ways to connect across the miles and despite the brevity of their face to face interactions made the ending so much sweeter and worth the wait. It is odd to read a YA romance where the main characters spend the majority of the novel out of each other's presence. They spend very little time in this novel actually communicating with one another. After that initial night in New York City, the story alternates chapters between Owen's life and Lucy's, each of them doing their own thing on opposite sides of the globe. There was huge potential for this to fall apart in the writing, but Jennifer E. Smith does a wonderful job keeping the hope for a relationship alive for the readers without bogging things down in depressive pining for lost love. The two main characters grow in their own lives independent of the other, and that character growth may even be more important than the eventual hope for a romantic happily ever after conclusion. I especially loved the subtle yet profound growth that takes place in the relationships between Lucy and her mother and Owen and his father. This is a very well written book that has cemented Jennifer E. Smith in place as one of my favorite YA authors. I will always check out the things she writes because they manage to weave the ordinary events of life with the extraordinary and magical moments that life can provide. I loved this one. Four stars!

Here's the thing about me and Jennifer E. Smith books. I always get sucked in because of the captivating covers and the interesting titles. I really liked The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and I didn't really enjoy This is What Happy Looks Like (WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?! THIS BOOK TOLD ME NOTHING!) and somewhere in the middle fell The Geography of You and Me. Lucy and Owen meet in a really awkward situation and he seemed like a pretty big jerk in the beginning but the fact that after their encounter they kept in touch was cute. I loved seeing these two characters warm up to each other. Overall all I can say is that it's a cute read but nothing too exciting. At least in my opinion but then again, that's just my personal opinion...

I think it was fitting that I started reading it in the airport, waiting for my flight. Then I read it on the plane and I finished it before going to sleep. And it was such a lovely reading experience and I shouldn't have doubted Jen. I've been hearing some so-so reviews and comments on TGoYaM because apparently, it was "slightly boring". While I do get why some people might have been bored with this book (e.g. third-person perspective, the protagonists weren't even in the same continent most of the time, why are they sending postcards - there's technology, etc.), I still found the book magical with Jen's trademark writing. I will defend this book with the best of my ability! Lucy and Owen met when New York experienced a blackout, leaving them stuck in the elevator. Lucy has been living in the same apartment building all her life and she can be considered an expert in being stuck in the elevator. But never during a blackout. Owen just moved into the basement of Lucy's apartment building, as he's the son of the building's new manager. He feels so out of place in New York City and never imagined he'd be stuck in an elevator so soon. That night, after they were rescued, they share this one-of-a-kind night where there's no electricity all over the city, when ice creams are free and an exodus of people are walking back home. Subways are down, there's no light except for emergency lights and flashlights and the heat suffocating. Two interesting people meet in an interesting situation but when everything goes back to normal, they don't know how to act around each other. Simply, the magic of the blackout was gone. Before they even get to fix what's between them (or might become something between them), they're trajectories are both moving away. Lucy moves to Edinburgh while Owen moves west with his father in search of a stable job. So even before the romance could develop and start, they were chucked out of each other's reach, only communicating via postcards and the occasional email. So why postcards? Is it me but don't you think postcards are sentimental and sweet? Lucy and Owen talked about the banality of postcards but they ended up realizing how postcards actually convey what they want to say to each other. "Wish you were here" when they truly wish the other's with them. Plus, (and Owen explains this) postcards take time to arrive, unlike the email which you receive in just a ping. With their undefined relationship, it just rang true and sensible to me that they'd just send postcards to each other. With email, they might be starting something while they're continents away, which isn't exactly smart. But postcards are casual and to receive one, isn't that so joyous? (I know I love postcards.) In my opinion, them sending postcards, while not conventional, wasn't just a plot device. Then we have those who aren't much fans of this because Lucy and Owen weren't together physically most of the time. While I also wish for more personal physical interaction between the two of them, that isn't the plot of the novel. The novel shows us that a relationship can materialize even if you're halfway across the globe. That even if you have someone near you and you like them, your heart and mind can be thinking and yearning for another person far, far away. That was the sweetest thing for me in this novel. It felt like Lucy and Owen are moving farther and farther away from each other but in reality, their hearts were moving even closer. And their relationship was far from perfect; they were far from perfect themselves. Lucy had a guy in Scotland and Owen had a girl too but when they met again, it was just undeniable that what they had was something different. Then they fought multiple of times but they just couldn't shake each other off their lives. Then they're separated yet again. They definitely have a challenge mapped out in their future and while the odds are stacked against us, it's the kind of romance you just savor. Even if they don't end up together HEA-style in the far future, for me, the peek we got of their intertwining lives and their journey (however impossible it was), was a journey I'll never ever exchange. As with Jen's other novels, Lucy and Owen have their own hang-ups and problems, usually of the familial kind. Owen's mother died and Lucy's pretty much living in her apartment alone. They have different backgrounds and as they travel and share postcards to each other, they also share a bit of themselves every time. They reveal what they feel, their problems and what things they wish for. I find third-person perspective hard to get into but even with just the first page of TGoYaM, I sighed with relief because I just love Jen's writing. It sounds playful, with some hidden comic and light tones, but simply written. Yet, when you read it, it's just different. I hate using the word magical but I just can't think of a word that encapsulates what I feel when I read her novels. It takes me into a different place, that's for sure. It feels wistful, like I'm in a different world where I'd rather be stuck in an elevator during a blackout. It's just, you have to read it for yourself. Jennifer E. Smith cements her place in the contemporary YA landscape with THE GEOGRAPHY OF YOU AND ME, yet another solid novel on her belt. The Geography of You and Me will take you to London, Paris, Scotland, California, Michigan and everywhere else, grabbing your heart without you knowing it. At the end of it, you'll feel the urge to travel, live and love. Such a great read.

Jennifer E. Smith has a knack for writing super cute contemporary romances. Sometimes they are excellent, and sometimes they are just merely adorable. Which isn’t a bad thing at all, obviously. I love adorable things always. But when you know an author is capable of excellent, like I know Jennifer E. Smith is (I’m talking about Stat Prob), adorable somehow seems like a letdown. Sad face. The good news is, adorable is what THE GEOGRAPHY OF YOU AND ME is, and I enjoyed it just fine. So this story begins with a blackout, and two kids getting stuck in an elevator together. One of them, Lucy, comes from a super wealthy family who lives on one of the NYC apartment building’s top floors. Her older brothers are off at college and her parents are those rich, continental, “we travel all the time and leave our kid by herself” couples. Owen, on the other hand, lives with his father in the basement, an apartment pity-given to them so that Owen’s dad could get work as the building’s super following his wife’s death. When the two teens are trapped in the elevator together, they wind up spending the whole afternoon and night together. Not like THAT, though. Just talking and maybe feeling some things and looking at the stars and it’s lovely. But in the morning, they go back to their own lives and wind up leaving the building where they had their little meet-cute pretty much right away for various reasons. They spend the next few years moving around and keeping in touch sporadically, but even though they are each in new places and experiencing new things, they can never seem to forget that blackout. So first things first: THE GEOGRAPHY OF YOU AND ME is sweet. Lucy and Owen are sweet together, for all that they only really spend a few hours together at first. They have this instant sense of “You are someone I’d like to spend time with,” but in a really lovely way. Their connection is tentative but touching. It’s obvious (or it was the way I read it) that they feel like they can have a connection beyond just the few hours they spend in the elevator, and later, on the roof of their building, stargazing. The sense of promise that hangs around them makes it that much more bittersweet when Lucy moves to Edinburgh with her parents and Owen sets off on a road trip with his grieving dad, and any opportunity for their little sprout of a maybe-relationship is squashed. But they manage to keep in touch through really fun little notes. I loved that they did things old school and sent REAL MAIL. I just thought that was endlessly charming. I love real mail. It’s so much more personal and intimate. And I loved that Owen and Lucy were sending each other these little one-liner postcards, basically just to say, “Hey. Thought of you today.” Like I said: ADORABLE. I appreciated the reality of their situation, though. They were never really together in any formal sense at all, so when Lucy moves to Edinburgh and meets a cute boy, it felt real that she would have feelings for him. And when Owen meets a girl out west when he and his father have settled down in Portland, it was bittersweet but real that whatever feelings he had for Lucy had tempered to a point where he wanted to be with someone else. I liked that Jennifer E. Smith didn’t make it so that they were pining away for one another hard from thousands of miles away after just a short time together. And one thing that Jennifer E. Smith never shorts her characters on is other issues. Relationships are never the only things going on in her books, and Lucy and Owen are certainly no exception. Lucy is struggling as always to find a place to fit in. She doesn’t really have many friends at school and gets lost in her family, when she even sees them. Her absentee parents are not bad people, but it would be hard for someone not to take that kind of abandonment personally eventually. And Owen is coping with the death of his beloved mother while trying to keep his dad from letting his own grief drag him under. I liked their relationship. It’s not very often that we see father-son relationships in YA–or not, at least, in the books I read–so it was nice to see in THE GEOGRAPHY OF YOU AND ME. So what’s the deal, then? I don’t think I’ve said one bad thing about this book. Why wasn’t I blown away with THE GEOGRAPHY OF YOU AND ME? It’s hard to say. I think my expectations were high because I still remember reading Stat Prob and legit crying over Hadley and her relationship with her dad. There were emotions there that were missing for me from THE GEOGRAPHY OF YOU AND ME, and so even though I liked it a lot and had warm fuzzies all over the place, it still didn’t meet the bar I have set for Jennifer E. Smith’s books. The double-edged sword of writing a book that gets to readers, I guess. Still, if you like Jennifer E. Smith’s books like I do, then THE GEOGRAPHY OF YOU AND ME is one you should read. Lucy and Owen are adorable but not perfect, so that’s always a bonus. And the family issues they are dealing with are real but not melodramatic, I didn’t think, so that’s always good, too. PLUS! Travel! Road trips! Scotland! I approve! And I very much enjoyed how Lucy and Owen made such an impression on each other that, despite miles and years, they still thought of one another.

The geography of you and me is a good summer read but slightly too unrealistic for my taste. It was still a very cute story.

JE Smith: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...... Smith is one of my go-to authors. After I read one of JES's books, I am always left happy. Her stories are always charming and heartwarming and The Geography of You and Me is no exception. This story begins during a black out in an elevator in Manhattan. Lucy and Owen are trapped together awaiting a rescue. In that elevator, in the dark, a connection was made. It was a connection that would endure through time and distance and everything else that was thrown their way. The more I read, the more I invested in Owen and Lucy's lives. I wanted things to work out. I wanted Owen to heal, and Lucy to work things out with her family. I wanted Lucy to fit in better and Owen's dad to snap out of it. I wanted them to find each other again, because, although I am who I am, I need love to win and an HEA.

Grade: A- This ARC was provided by Edelweiss and Little, Brown for Young Readers in exchange for an honest review. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: One of the best parts of this book is the premise and how it plays out. It's all very well-written. And the second best part is the romance. It's very slow burn. It takes months for any sparks to actually happen between Owen and Lucy, and they don't end up together until much later in the book (and boy, is the ending sweet). I would've liked a bit more permanence, as it felt like the characters flitted all over, but that's part of the book's charm. Edinburgh, Scotland really comes to life in Lucy's chapters and, besides New York, it's my favorite setting in The Geography of You and Me. The whole idea of Owen and Lucy sending postcards to each other was charming, and it played out well. They joked about postcards shortly after they first met, and I loved how that was the catalyst for their communication throughout most of the book. Their first kiss was sweet, and I definitely reread the moment many times. I enjoyed the scene in Prague and how Lucy gradually pressed at her parents to acknowledge her and spend time with her. I both liked and disliked chapters 25-34. They flowed well, and I sort of get why they had to be different chapters, but I think they probably would've worked all as one, especially since the book is in 3rd person POV. At times, Owen's relationship with his dad (and his dad in general) felt a bit cliche and perhaps a bit blah to me. However, I did like how Owen and Lucy found different people in their time apart. It was incredibly realistic. As for relationships I wanted to see developed further, I wanted more of Lucy and her brothers! Sibling relationships are always some of the best to me. And, as for the ugly, one of the things I love most about Jennifer's books is that the language and romance are always PG. The Verdict: I think The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight is still my favorite Jennifer E. Smith book, but The Geography of You and Me is a lovely read - definitely one I'll enjoy for quite some time and one that is worth giving a chance.

Lo compré en Amazon warehouse (productos de segunda mano con precio muy rebajado que ofrece Amazon para quien no lo sepa) y la verdad es que estoy contenta, tiene una pequeña tara en la portada pero casi ni se nota (te avisa desde antes que este tipo de productos podrían tener algún defecto). Sobre el contenido del libro quiero decir que me encantó su lectura. Me gustó la trama, los personajes, las descripciones, etc... Una historia muy ligera y rápida de leer, perfecta para cuando quieras desconectar de otras lecturas más densas. Me encantó leer sobre los dos protagonistas y los viajes que hacen, te sumerges totalmente en la historia. Lo que no me gustó fue el final porque parece que la autora ha cortado el último capítulo por la mitad y lo ha dejado así. Me esperaba que tuviera un final bueno porque todo lo demás (según mi opinión claro está) es bueno y no fue así. Sin embargo me gusta como escribe la autora y pienso leer más libros suyos.

My teenager daughter loved it.

I've read three of Jennifer E. Smiths previous books (You Are Here, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, and This is What Happy Looks Like) and I've absolutely loved all of them. So when I heard about this book, I was ridiculously excited for it. I couldn't wait for it to come out, and once I got my hands on a copy, I was excited to read it. I was not disappointed. Once again Jennifer E. Smith has created a story, that you can't help but smile about as you read it. I'll admit, I'm not a huge fan if the insta-love kind of thing, but Jennifer E. Smith just makes it work, and I loved reading about the instant connection between Owen and Lucy in this book. I also loved that it was written in dual perspectives. I even loved that it was third person, because despite normally being a bigger fan of first person, I felt that for this story, it worked really nicely having it done in third. The two main characters of this story were great, and I liked that they had their own back stories and progressing story lines, which were separate to the love story. I loved the travel aspects as well. Dotting about from place to place and yet always thinking of that one night that they met. It was fantastically written. This book is full of wonderful moments, paced out fantastically and it's definitely one of the best books I've read this year.

O livro é muito bem escrito, mas a história discorre de forma lenta. Para quem espera um romance para passar o tempo, é ótimo; mas para quem espera aventura, pode passar o livro todo buscando um clímax quase que inexistente. Muito bom para expandir o vocabulário na língua inglesa.

Something draws you to read on. Can be slow in places by well written (nothing else to add but they want more words)