First & Then - Emma Mills
Book Synopsis: Devon Tennyson wouldn't change a thing. She's happy watching Friday night games from the bleachers, silently crushing on best friend Cas, and blissfully ignoring the future after high school. But the universe has other plans. It delivers Devon's cousin Foster, an unrepentant social outlier with a surprising talent for football, and the obnoxiously superior and maddeningly attractive star running back, Ezra, right where she doesn't want them: first into her P.E. class and then into every other aspect of her life. Pride and Prejudice meets Friday Night Lights in this contemporary novel about falling in love with the unexpected boy, with a new brother, and with yourself.
Devon is having a crisis. Not a typical exaggeration of a teenage moody phase... a serious one and it's not just one problem, it's a whole rain storm of one.
I don't know if I can honestly say that I loved this book, I loved parts of it, and as a whole it was a good debut novel. The issue that I had with it was that it was too many things going on at once (not enough to make me snooze, but enough to make me want to actually keep reading.) For example, falling in love with your best friend (so cliche and overdone), finding out said best friend doesn't reciprocate those feelings (now I see an actual dilemma.) Cas is probably the worst, and Devon deserved so much better, and it was more than a bit of a let down that he strung poor Devon along.
Foster and Ezra tied for being my favorite characters, they pretty much redeemed the book for me. Both of them were essential to the story and the whole chemistry between Ezra and Devon is magnetic, just like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett from Pride & Prejudice.
The hard cover dust jacket didn't make sense to me, until I actually opened the book and peeked under the cover and then my mind completely changed.
This book will definitely make you have high school flashbacks... good or bad, there's nothing like a trip down memory lane. Because, isn't the time spent in high school the best years of your life?
Rating: ★★★☆☆