Time of Our Lives Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka Book Review

“For the first time, I wonder if college won’t be everything I’ve envisioned. The thought is harrowing. Worse, if I go to college far from home, far from my family, and I feel this way. I’ll really be alone.”

(pg 267)

About

Authors: Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Romance

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Synopsis

A boy desperate to hold on, a girl ready to let go.

Fitz Holton waits in fear for the day his single mother’s early-onset Alzheimer’s starts stealing her memory. He’s vowed to stay close to home to care for her in the years to come–never mind the ridiculous college tour she’s forcing him on to visit schools where he knows he’ll never go. Juniper Ramirez is counting down the days until she can leave home, a home crowded with five younger siblings and zero privacy. Against the wishes of her tight-knit family, Juniper plans her own college tour of the East Coast with one goal: get out.

When Fitz and Juniper cross paths on their first college tour in Boston, they’re at odds from the moment they meet– while Juniper’s dying to start a new life apart for her family, Fitz faces the sacrifices he must make for his. Their relationship sparks a deep connection–in each other’s eyes, they glimpse alternate possibilities regarding the first big decision of their adult lives. 

Time of Our Lives is a story of home and away, of the wonder and weight of memory, of outgrowing fears and growing into the future. 

Review

Spoilers Contained Below

To the college-bound,

As someone who’s been through it two years ago, I know all the feelings that Fitz and Juniper experienced in this transitional period of their life. And that’s what I really enjoyed about this book: how authentic, real, and honest it writes the emotions, the inner-turmoil, and the excitement that comes with graduating high school and going to college. It was different for a Wibberley-Broka book because their past books tied in Shakespeare with modern teen romance, but I don’t think this one did, but then again, I could be wrong because gosh only knows I haven’t read many classics or Shakespeare to say so 😅. But even if this book didn’t parallel the Bard or any classic, I just really liked how relatable it was. I mean, isn’t that the essence of a good story? Something that makes you feel seen or related?

Anyway, I enjoyed it 💛

Let’s talk about the two protagonists of the hour and what they are going through.

I’m going to start with Juniper because she had heavy things she was dealing with, but not as heavy as Fitz. The thing I liked about Juniper was how friendly, out-going, and passionate she was. She had a natural I-love-to-learn-and-know things vibe and I think that’s so beautiful and wonderful. She’s interested in the world and to know and see everything because she hasn’t. There’s absolutely nothing more cool to me than a person who is highly passionate about learning or invested in what he/she is doing. I loved the wonder she would display going to all these colleges and how well-researched she was on it. It highlighted that newfound wonder a lot of people have when they’ve been “sheltered” all their life.

I put “sheltered” in quotations because I don’t think Juniper was sheltered, more so, tied down to her family. I don’t know much about the Latino-Mexican household, but from what I picked up in movies and shows, I know that family is everything to the Lation-Mexican culture and that family is very close—-an unbreakable bond. So I liked how Wibberley-Broka kept that essence of the family with Juniper. There’s a lot of positives about having such a close-knit family—–siblings, restaurant, unconditional love. But there’s also a lot of contention with a family that’s so close. And one of those contentions for Juniper was feeling like she was shackled to them and that she couldn’t go out into the world to explore it or to figure out who she could be. Her family, mostly her Tiá made her feel like she had to stay with the family, be with the family, take care of the family, and put the family first and if Juniper didn’t, Juniper should feel guilty for it because that would be “betraying” or breaking up the family. And that’s unfair to make a young adult feel like that because of course Juniper loved her family, no questions asked, but I feel like as a young adult, she should get the opportunity to be on her own and grow. Doesn’t mean she will forget the family, but it just means she needs time to do her. In the beginning of the book, we see Juniper with the family, and to me it seemed very unhealthy how much they relied on her for things or how much they expected of her because she was the eldest. I also didn’t like how they asked her to do everything. Like she’s a kid, give her a freaking break. If the Tiá wanted something done, I didn’t understand why she couldn’t do it in the first place and why she would then blame Juniper for not doing it. It also hurt my heart for Juniper when she got blamed for things going wrong in her family. Like when Marissa snuck out and went to a party. I have NO IDEA how any of that was Juniper’s fault. Like excuse me, did Juniper tell Marissa to go to the party? Did she tell Marissa to drink? Weren’t Tiá and everyone else home and should have been aware of Marissa’s actions? 🤨 Like don’t go blaming Juniper just because Marissa knowingly snuck out and drank and you guys didn’t hear it. Don’t drag Juniper into this and blame her that “oh, she left and this wouldn’t have happened if she were home, ” or “if you were home because you’re a light sleeper, Marissa wouldn’t have snuck out.” LIKE, THE FAMILY SHOULD GET ITS HEAD OUT THEIR BRAS AND TIDY WHITIES AND JUST ADMIT THAT IT WAS ON THEM. STOP MAKING JUNIPER FEEL BAD! Heck, even in that situation, Juniper did good by calling the mom to go get Marissa so she wouldn’t be going home with a stranger, or at worst, driving home drunk. I felt really bad when Juniper got that call from Marissa though because I was like, “wasn’t she in a different state?” And she was. And I think they all needed to realize Juniper’s growing up and whether they liked it or not they had to stop relying on her to be everything for them. They needed to give her some freaking space.

Because first of all, her siblings going through her personal things even when she hid it was disrespectful. And I get it, I have siblings and we go through each other’s things, but when a sibling says not to, you absolutely don’t because you owe them some ounce of respect and privacy. And then second, her family being so gung-ho on her to stay home and take care of the family or you’re breaking the family up, made me feel like it was doing the exact opposite of making Juniper care more. It made Juniper resent her family even more so. It made her feel angry that they weren’t supportive of her or that they blamed her for everything. And I get that. I truly do. Because when you have such a close family and you don’t want to disappoint them or hurt them, but you need to do something for yourself—create that distance—-it’s hard to take those first steps away knowing how much it will hurt the family and yourself, but you do it anyway because you need it. And when the family comes tugging back, all you want to do is to resist it because you need to be free—-to explore, to figure things out. But when they keep tugging and tugging, it makes you angry at them for stopping you from living your life no matter how much you love them.

Because Juniper loved her family. That wasn’t the problem, the problem was her family wasn’t loving her enough to trust her to live her own life. It hurt me that when Juniper was falling for Fitz after breaking up with Matt that she wanted to confide in her family, especially Marissa, but she felt herself holding back from them. And boy, did I feel that 👌🏼. Because when you start to be angry at your family or people you love, it makes it harder for you to feel like you can tell them anything because they already have taken things badly so far, so you don’t want to tell them anything more. It’s hard to explain exactly, but I know what Juniper felt because I feel the same everyday. I guess, to put the feeling in more words, it also just feels difficult to talk to your family when they don’t believe in your dreams in the first place. So when you want to tell them about your dreams, you hold back because you already know that they won’t care or they won’t like it. And it builds more resentment and anger and hurt that they made you feel that way. And I could feel Juniper feeling hurt by her family, which in turn made her feel like she couldn’t communicate with them when she wanted to. I also think it came from her fear of them judging her even more so in her life when she already knew where they stood.

“I could really use sisterly commiseration right now, which is unlike me. We’ve never been the type of siblings who braid each other’s hair, who share every secret and every detail of our lives. But this is one time it’d be nice to open up to her. The fact that I can’t doesn’t just frustrate me. It frightens me.”

Because I’m beginning to recognize this feeling. I don’t want this to be the rest of my relationship with my family, this dynamic of their constructing tendencies forcing me to push and push until I no longer remember wanting to be close to them.”

(pg. 200)

It frightens her because she doesn’t want this resentment or distance from her family. She really doesn’t.

All she was asking was for a chance of freedom and to do what she wanted. And they should have supported and respected her on it. Sure, it would be hard to have her gone and all parents and family members go through the struggle of adjusting to someone moving away. It’s HARD. I get it, but that fear of what life would be like without that person home/near, shouldn’t translate to keeping the person nearby and making them feel unsupported in what they want to do. It should be learning to let go and accepting that maybe this is what’s best for that person they love. And it’s something I also wanted to say earlier, but yea, when family keeps trying to pull you back closer to home and they keep pulling and pulling, it makes you not want to be closer to them anymore because of how tight they have a hold and how demanding it feels. There’s something I heard once about how everything you chase after runs away or something like that. And in this case it reminded me of how her family was chasing after her to come back, but when you chase something, it doesn’t come to you, it runs away. Because they don’t want to be captured or hurt, and the person running reminded me of Juniper. She didn’t want to be captured and tied down anymore but her family kept chasing and chasing and making her run farther and farther to the point where if it got too bad, she might not ever want to go home and be with them. It also made me think that’s why she wanted to choose a college far away from home—-they chased her away.

There was this phone call that broke my heart for Juniper.

“The only way to have even the smallest stretch of freedom from this family is to leave it completely. Don’t make me do it too.”

(pg. 163-4)

When I read that part, I got chills 👌🏼.

They were nearly to the bad point of chasing her to the edge. Because I felt it. She was tired of being so constricted with them and what they expected or wanted of her, that she knew the only way to be free was to say she would cut herself off completely from her family if that was the only way. She didn’t want it to be that way, but she wanted to be free. As a young adult, it’s beyond hard to think, let alone say, you would cut yourself off from a family you love if it meant that you got to be independent and grow. But as a young adult, I genuinely believe that you need time to be by yourself. I know in high school, I was very dependent on my family and all my friends would go out with one another, drive to places, and whatnot. But I stayed home with my family and that gave me no space to grow and figure out myself. But when I went to college and doomed, it was ROUGH being away from home the first time, not having any friends, and living this whole new life. I was sad all the time, I felt alone, I felt scared, and I missed home.

And my first year of college, SUCKED 😂 because I was soooooooooo sad! Then my second year of college started better and then when I felt like things were okay, lo and behold, quarantine hit and my dorming and independence got cut short just when I started to enjoy being independent. I didn’t like the dorms, but I loved having a space of my own where I could work out, eat what I wanted, and talk to new people. A lot of people in my life knew I DETESTED dorming, but what they don’t know is that I liked it in the end. And I needed to dorm and be miserable for a year and a half in order to realize that I could be happy on my own and that I could be independent. It helped me grow stronger to know I don’t always have to be dependent on my family or to crave to be home with them 24 hours 7 days a week because I was scared of missing out or I was worried about my single dad being lonely. It gave me space to realize that my dad was going to be okay. I wasn’t missing out. I was figuring it out. And I am beyond thankful to have learned that. I just look back now on June 24 when I’m writing this, thinking I would have liked to finish my second year of college traditionally with dorming and what that would have been like, but that’s okay. Because I’m growing in new ways. Next year, I’m not dorming because of my class schedule, but I will be driving a lot and I don’t do that often, so it’s going to be different. Suffice to say, being independent and having space away from family does help. And Juniper needed that.

“There’s a loneliness in feeling like you no longer know yourself, one that looms large when facing the enormity of the future.”

(pg. 266)

And GOSH, did I relate so much. When Juniper was touring the campus (I forget which) by herself and she was thinking about how she wanted to fit in, wondering where she would eat, who would be her friends, like all those thoughts are thoughts I feel like every person who goes to college thinks about. It’s this big wondering of who am I and where do I fit into this place? How will I live?

And when you think about all those things, there is this HUGE sense of loneliness where you feel like you have to face the future ahead by yourself. In a lot of ways, I guess you do, but it’s difficult because there’s all this unknown and it feels like no one will understand it but you. I know when I went to college I felt BEYOND lonely and sad! 😢 All my friends went to the college near home, so they already had friends. They also lived at home, so they didn’t understand how lonely and unhappy I was to be dorming and away from home for the first time in my life. They didn’t understand how miserable it felt to go to class from class, trying to make friends with people who were just as scared and closed off as me. They didn’t understand that there were so many things I was scared of. It felt lonely. My dad didn’t get it. My sister didn’t get it. My brother didn’t get it. My best friend didn’t get it. It felt, sorry to be repetitive, lonely. I didn’t know who I was. I was unhappy. I didn’t like where I was. I didn’t know anyone. I barely ate. I stayed in my room. I always went home for the weekends, traveling between home and dorms with a bag—-like I was living out of a luggage. It sucked.

So I get it.

And I think when Juniper said that “I wonder if college won’t be everything I envisioned,” I also felt that. Because the movies make college out to be this huge boujee place with rich, pristine houses/dorms, parties, dirking, making bunch of friends, going to huge sophisticated classes with, excuse me not a teacher, but a professor, and falling in love, but when you go to college, it’s absolutely none of that 😂. I guess, some of it yea, but the college I went to? None of that. It wasn’t everything I envisioned or hoped for. I have a whole blog post of five things college taught me as a Freshman and frankly, I would like to do a college myths post, so I probably will and will link it along with my other five things college taught me as a Freshman blog post. But I understood Juniper and her thinking that college wouldn’t be as great as she hoped for. And I think that was part of the fear talking when she was thinking that. It was settling in because she was truly by herself for the first time on this huge campus, that the enormity of college hit—-that this could be her life in the next year/few months—–just her, her backpack, laptop, and her dreams.

“Tonight, I felt lonely for the first time, maybe ever, and I just kept thinking this is what college will be like. Except worse because I’ll have moved away from my family, and I’ll be feeling alone in the place I’ve chosen as my home.”

(pg. 272)

Going back to the loneliness aspect, I liked how Wibberley-Broka highlighted this emotion well because it’s the biggest emotion you feel when you’re going out into the world by yourself. Juniper had always surrounded herself with her family and when she moved away from that, as much as she wanted that freedom, she also knew she’d miss her family—-the comfort. That’s completely natural. It’s hard to let go even if you want to. She felt like she was going to feel alone in college because she did it to herself—-choosing to go away for college—-and I get it. It will feel different and lonely at first, but then she will make a new home and maybe it will take a day for it to settle in as her new reality, maybe like me, it will take a year and a half, but we all get there. And if there’s one thing I would have wanted to tell Juniper was that it’s going to be hard to be away from home, your family, and your comfort, but you will grow beyond your wildest dreams into the person you need to be from this experience. Because sometimes we need to be put in situations that challenge us and will help prepare us for other steps and chapters in our lives. This was hers.

I loved the moment she realized she needed her family even if they were very constricting on her.

“But maybe that’s not how finding yourself works. In college and in everything after, I won’t be discovering new pieces of myself. I’ll be uncovering what’s already there. And if that’s true, I don’t need to fear growing into myself while remaining connected to my home. I don’t need to force college and family into harsh opposition.”

(pg. 331)

After seeing Fitz and Lewis hug it out, it made her realize no matter how complex and hard a family could be, family is still family and they will always be there if you let them in. And I liked how she realized that she didn’t need to cut them off to be who she wanted to be in this next chapter of her life. She just wanted their love and support. I loved the moment when she called Tía who was helping Juniper’s brother do math homework she didn’t understand. When Tía said to Juniper, “Will you tell me about the school you like best?” My heart warmed because it was always this struggle to get through to her Tía, but her Tía taking the steps forward to be interested in what Juniper wanted with this simple question made Juniper finally feel supported. She needed to hear that. I also knew that her calling her Tía on a random day and Juniper saying she just wanted to say hi, made Tía realize that Juniper would always be one call away and that Juniper loved her family and would be there for them. And that’s why I felt like Tía opened up to Juniper because she felt like they would be okay if Juniper still cared.

I’m happy that they worked things out and I would love to see more of the family one day and how they grew from Juniper leaving and how Juniper also grew with being away from home 😊.

Fitz has a beyond opposite sentiment with college. He wants to stay home. He is like me 😂.

I honestly feel like I am a mix of Juniper and Fitz, I genuinely do.

Fitz’s life changed the minute his mom got tested and she told him about her getting Alzheimer’s one day. As a young adult, or any age really, that’s beyond PAINFUL to hear. BEYOND. And I just wanted to reach through the pages and hug Fitz because I felt like he felt a lot. He felt angry that this was happening to his mom and he felt alone because his brother didn’t seem to care. It’s why Fitz was so adamant about staying close to home for college so he could be near his mom and spend as much time with her as he could. It’s also so he could take care of her when things developed and the brother, Lewis, wasn’t there to help the mom. I remember reading in the beginning and Fitz asking his mom all these questions to test her memory like how she met the dad or what did she do or things like that, and I didn’t think anything of it because I was like, maybe he really just cares for his mom. But then he discussed how his mom had Alzheimers and then my heart panged and those questions made sense to me. He was testing to see if his mom remembered things.

Fitz was very sure that he would go to college near her, but I liked how his mom wanted him to explore his options and live his life. But as someone who also worries about her parents, I understand why Fitz didn’t want to let go. You feel worried that your parent(s) won’t be okay and that no one else will care for them, so you feel the responsibility of caring for your parent(s). As a young adult who has his/her whole life ahead of them, it’s hard because you want to be there for your parent(s) because they cared for you, but at the same time, there’s going to be a part of you that wants to grow. But Fitz suppressed that part because he cared so much about his mom. I admired that.

What was hard was Fitz’s relationship with Lewis. I completely relate to their relationship. I have two older siblings who are highly successful, one going to hopefully be a doctor one day and one who grew up the princess, pageant queen. They’re all older than me now and they are all on the way to moving out—-living their own life. I live with a single dad and as the youngest I feel like I always have to worry/be concerned with my dad because all my siblings are eager to move out and start their own life and I never want my dad to feel lonely. So that’s why it was important for me to have that sense of independence with dorming as I mentioned earlier because I needed to separate myself from caring too much to the point it held me back. And I felt Fitz needed to do the same. Because it’s not like him going away from college would be selfish or like he didn’t love his mom, but it would be him learning to be okay on his own in knowing that there comes a point where holding onto something too tightly is unhealthy for both parties. And I think we both reached those points. So Fitz needed to let go as much as he could while also still keeping his mom within arms reach. Because his situation was completely different than mine, but the sentiment was still there.

Back to Lewis and their relationship though, they never talked about anything meaningful. Fitz also had this resentful feel and anger towards his brother because his brother would degrade him for not having had sex yet or a girlfriend, which I really didn’t like that Lewis did. Just because you didn’t have sex or have been in a relationship doesn’t make a person any less of a person, you know? It’s kind of sad we live in a society where you’re placement as a young adult is determined by your sex life or the amount of people you date. Fitz was a good boy and I respected him. But those bullying moments and comments Lewis made might have not seemed hurtful to Lewis, but words do hurt. As the butt end of a lot of jokes and comments like that, I know that they stay with you and it makes you angry at the person and respect them less. I also felt how Fitz had this crude playboy image of Lewis in his head because Lewis slept with a lot of girls, he partied, he was uncommitted to Priya, and he drank. I understood it because from the outside, yea, it looked like Lewis was a party boy who just hit it and quit it. But deep down, I knew Lewis was a good brother and that he was dealing with things in his own way. Lewis was concerned about the mother and Fitz and I think Fitz just never saw that side to him because as Lewis said, he wanted to be strong for Fitz and be this model image of carefree so Fitz would learn to let go like him. But it really did the opposite because it made Fitz feel like Lewis didn’t care at all.

There was that moment when I think Lewis got drunk and then Fitz was blowing up on him and then Lewis was like, “Just one night, just for one night I want a break.” Or something like that. And when I read that, I was like, he’s doing a lot behind the scenes Fitz doesn’t know. Because at that point I was like maybe Lewis is working to help cover expenses with his mom and that’s why he’s doing all these job interviews. I didn’t think his relationship with Priya was serious, but when he said that he’d given that up because he needed to be close to home rather than be with her in California, I felt that. Because that was his form of sacrifice. Deep down he really is a good son and a good brother for being concerned about Fitz with the next chapter of his life and wanting to show Fitz that there’s this whole other world out there that he has to give a chance to before closing himself off to it.

So I really liked how we got to see their relationship from Juniper’s perspective and how she would see the way Lewis looked at Fitz a certain way or how Juniper would talk to Lewis and have deep conversations about how much he really cared for Fitz. It was a big whole miscommunication/misrepresentation thing on both their parts all because they didn’t communicate well.

“Sometimes honestly with families is worse. Sometimes it doesn’t end with everyone coming together, commiserating or celebrating or understanding each other. Sometimes it ends on the floor of a hotel room in the dead of the night, with tears and fighting and finally not talking for days.”

(pg. 222)

It’s hard to be honest to family because they know you better than anyone. And when you give that much trust and love to people, it’s so easy for them to turn it around and use it against you. Then it hurts ten times worse. But I liked how it talked about how even if talking through things as a family does open things up, it can still lead to complications. What’s important is that communication. I honestly would have liked the actual conversation between Lewis and Fitz rather than the brief description we got about how they did talk it out. Personally, their relationship meant a lot in the story and it just felt glossed over with a paragraph or so about what needed to be said. But that’s just me and I’m a sucker for family 😊.

Besides family, there was the whole Juniper and Fitz relationship, which I enjoyed. Was I a huge fan of the romance? Not really 🙈. I liked the family and self-discovery aspect a lot more. But I think their relationship worked because they learned things from each other. And they say that some people come in your life to teach you something and that was this for them.

The tagline of the book:

A boy desperate to hold on. A girl ready to let go.

Felt really fitting to what both learned from each other. Fitz learned to let go a bit and to stop living in the past of what was and what he hoped would always be because that wasn’t what was going to happen. He needed to live his own life and find his happiness. When Juniper called him out on him not using his mom as an excuse not to try, I thought, well darn. She was right. Because in some ways, he was cowering behind his mom as his way of not letting go—-getting outside of his comfort zone. Because if this wasn’t happening with his mom, the question would be, would he still go away for college or stay home? And when he asked himself that, it changed the game for him in knowing that he needed to own up to how he was living with all this responsibility on his shoulders and fear. It’s okay to be scared, especially in his case, but there’s this saying that we have to do it scared. We have to keep going and living even if things are scary. Because each moment is a gift and you never know when, so we have to appreciate and do all we can today, this second, this minute, and be the best we can. And that’s all Fitz could do.

I loved how over the course of being with Juniper and going on these school tours, he opened himself up to the possibility of going out of state for college and to even apply to different schools. I liked how Juniper did such a sweet thing for him and had them sit in on a linguistics lecture at a college to help him find his major.

I would just like to say though, Wibberely-Broka really did me dirty with this book and all these words that made absolutely no sense to me 😂. When I read I like to write down words I don’t know and I literally wrote down 46 freaking words. It’s either my vocabulary is atrocious or they just wanted to make me feel inadequate with my vocabulary! 😂 But seriously, when Fitz said he carried around a dictionary, I was like, “Oh heck, where’s my post-it and my pen, I have things to write.” I can’t judge because I have my own dictionary of words I want to know to expand my vocabulary, so I guess I should thank Wibberley-Broka and Fitz for polishing my vocabulary 😆.

Honestly, the moment that broke my heart the most was when Fitz called his mom and told him about being a linguistics major and she said sociology. MY HEART PLUMMETED!!!!! I was like, oh no, it’s happening 😫. And that broke my heart for Fitz because he was doing so well in learning to let go and be open minded and here his mom was secretly having symptoms and keeping it from him. Gosh, that sucked!!!

I also just want to say how Fitz on his own is vastly different from the Fitz he is when he’s at home. In the beginning when he was closed off, he was closed off. He was insecure, broodsish, polite, scared, and awkward. But then there was this weird shift after he met Juniper and he was all of a sudden confident, joking, and charming? Personally, that switch seemed very fast, but maybe it was to highlight how there was a real good personable person when he wasn’t so insecure and scared. I don’t know. It was also never mentioned how Fitz saw Juniper on the bus ride in the beginning of the book. You’d think he would have recognized her then 😆.

Juniper also learned to root herself in her family as mentioned earlier with her talking to her Tía again and making things right. The thing with Juniper was Matt, her boyfriend, now ex. It made sense that they broke up because they wanted different things and a different college experience and I get it, it’s the typical, “don’t go to college in a relationship, break up with your high school sweetheart” kind of thing, but it happened really quickly. It escalated really quickly and ended really quickly. Because you would think because they’d been in a relationship for years that they would, I don’t know, at least fight for each other? 😆 Or try to make things right? Like actually talk things through? But no, they just seemed to give up so easily on it. Which I get,what they were wasn’t what they are or wanted to be, but still it seemed so clean cut. Like let’s cut Matt out and put Fitz in.

And that’s kind of why I wasn’t fully into Fitz and Juniper as a relationship. I liked them as friends, but boyfriend-girlfriend? Eh. Because Juniper literally just broke up with her long-term boyfriend and then she bounced to another guy who’s never been in a relationship and yet she had sex with in a car? 😆 I’m sorry, did someone say ESCALATION? BECAUSE MAN, that was fast! Fitz just seems like a way for her to stop feeling things for Matt and to push away those feelings. I don’t know if what they had was real or if it just came from two people going through so much they just wanted to pour their hurt/love into each other? I don’t know. But, really, in a car? Fitz, I expected better! And, can we talk about how he would do pushups at random for her? Like the heck? Excuse me, doing five pushups in a bathroom isn’t going to turn you into Captain America, my friend 😂. It’s also sad that he felt the need to be more masculine by doing push-ups so he could impress Juniper. It really says a lot about the toxic masculine culture and expectations we have of men.

But I thought it was sweet when he took her to that lodge/waterfall place because it had good architecture and he wanted to show Juniper it. That was sweet. His confidence was unmatched though, again, it just seemed weird because of how insecure Fitz comes across that when he flirted with Juniper in the beginning of the book, it just took me by surprise how easily he turned it on. I also liked the moment when Fitz read The Great Gatsby in the park, his big epiphany moment to give life a try.

I think the way they left things was fitting because as far as I know, it didn’t seem like they knew all that much about each other except college and a few other things; they didn’t seem to have a deeper connection, so them breaking it off for their futures—-whatever it might be—was a smart move. I liked how it still kept the possibility of something more in the future because it leaves room for more of their story like if by some serendipitous 😉 moment they’ll see each other again. And I like that. Because maybe when they’re older and have more experiences, they can find each other and make things work for real. But who knows. I really enjoyed how Fitz, the man of words, couldn’t describe the moment he was when he was with her that last time. I could: sweet.

The most SHOCKING thing I’m still SHOOK over was Cameron and BB (Barfy Brendan aka. Just Brendan) made their grand cameo because of course, and they broke UP!!! 😫 EXCUSE ME!!!! Honestly, the only romance in this book I cared about 👉🏼👈🏼. Joking. But seriously? Cameron and Brendan no more? That shook me!!! Wibberley-Broka shook me. I thought characters get happily ever afters? I was cheated!!!😆 They broke up because of the long-distance college thing, but from what I made out, they still like each other and care for each other so maybe like Fitz and Juniper when they’re older, they’ll find each other again. Or maybe not because honestly they were cute, but were they right for each other or only right for each other at the moment/that part of their life? I don’t know. But I guess, heck, if they’re breaking up, at least I know they still care for each other. I need an update on Cameron and BB one day!😅

Besides that, I really enjoyed how open ended the ending was because it leaves a lot of things up in the air of what could be.

Both were going to be changed people when they went back home and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for them because with college, or life, things are scary, complex, and overwhelming and it’s hard, but it’s reassuring to know that there will always be people behind you and in front of you who will be by your side to help you through it. I hope Juniper goes to her dream college and maybe designs her family a new house or maybe Fitz and her house if they ever get married. I hope Lewis and Fitz form a stronger, more honest relationship where they talk to each other. I hope Lewis and Priya can be together one day because he really does love her. I hope the mom has many more years to come.

“Just because one person doesn’t remember something doesn’t mean the memory is gone . . . it doesn’t mean the person isn’t who they’ve always been. . . even if memory is the only place we’ll exist for each other, we won’t be less real for it.”

(p.g 342)

I really loved what Juniper said to Fitz because he needed it. Fitz was holding onto his mom so much because he wanted her to be who she always was, but the mom would always be who she was even without her memory because memory didn’t change that his mom was his mom and that he loved her. He could carry her memories for her and live on in them. And I liked that sentiment. Because memories are special and important and it’s not any less real because they have happened.

This was definitely a special story to remember 💚

Anyway, what was your favorite part of the book? Least favorite part? Anything I mentioned that you want to discuss more about? What was your college experience like? Were you more like a Fitz, Juniper, or both?  Let me know below in the comments as I love hearing from you all 💕

I hope you have a beautiful day whenever and wherever you might be reading this.

And as always, with love,

Rating

4.68 Full Bloom Flowers

Characters: Juniper and Fitz are two characters every young person can see themselves in and relate to the difficulties of what it means to grow up, to let go, to hold on, and to move on.

Writing: There’s something special and magical with what Wibberley-Broka do and there’s not other way to describe it than when you read their books, you can take away so much more than just romance, but lessons for life.

Plot: Highly relatable 👌🏼

Romance: I didn’t really feel the romance between Fitz and Juniper and I would have been fine if they were just really good friends, but YA says romance, you say of course! But I liked the family dynamic more than anything 💚

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