There could have been so many things that went wrong with this book. It was so easy to make this a bad-boy-meets-good- girl-book. So easy to make this into Bria-goes-on-an- adventure-of-a-lifetime book. So easy to turn it into mindless chick lit. But it wasn't! Which is why this book is awesome. I loved all of Kristin Hubbard's characters. Each one was so well-written, and they have a depth to them reminiscent of Sara Zarr's writing. That's pretty high praise right there. Even Bria's initial whiny and clingy attitude in the beginning of the novel didn't bother me that much. I forgave her because she turned into a much more sarcastic and enjoyable narrator later on.

 

And guess what? The romantic storyline? It actually gets developed. Bria doesn't fall for Rowan the minute she meets him (but of course, there's an initial attraction). They don't start making out twenty pages into the book. They had a well-paced, normally developed, believable relationship! With all the horrendous romance in YA nowadays, that in itself deserves a round of applause. And although Hubbard sets up the novel to have a both-characters-are-in-love- with-each-other-but-neither-says-anything-because-each- assumes-that-the-other-wants-a-brother-and-sister- relationship storyline, it wasn't really that clichéd, and it felt natural in the book.

 

As a reader, I could tell that Hubbard definitely had been backpacking herself, and she's been to Central America. Otherwise, the places that she described wouldn't have been so authentic and lively. A nice surprise was the sketches in this novel. There were several of the characters, the places she visited, and animals.

 

One of my pet peeves is when an author gives her characters artistic talent, and the character can draw people from memory with ease. That doesn't happen. No matter how much talent a person has, she needs to practice in order to be good, and it's extremely difficult to draw realistic sketches without a reference. Hubbard knows that, and she makes Bria work hard for her art, which adds tremendously to the overall realism. Hubbard's writing style was pleasant, descriptive without being burdensome most of the time, although there were some parts that had me rolling my eyes. There were some things in the novel that I just didn't get, but maybe that was due to my ignorance more than anything else. Overall, this was a highly enjoyable novel, perfect for summer. Just be prepared to be infected with wanderlust after finishing the book!