Through to You by Lauren Barnholdt

Through to You

By Lauren Barnholdt

Published: July 8, 2014

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Pages: 288

Opposites attract—and then complicate—in this romantic, relatable novel from the author of Two-way Street and Sometimes It Happens.

It starts with a scribbled note in class: I like your sparkle. Harper had casually threaded a piece of blue and silver tinsel through her ponytail in honor of school spirit day. And that carefree, corny gesture is what grabs Penn Mattingly’s eye. Penn—resident heartbreaker of the senior class. Reliably unreliable. Trouble with a capital “T.” And okay, smolderingly sexy.

Harper’s surprised by Penn’s attention—and so is Penn. The last thing he needs is a girlfriend. Or even a friend-with-benefits. The note is not supposed to lead to anything.

Oh, but it does. They hang out. They have fun. They talk. They make out. And after a while, it seems like they just click. But Penn and Harper have very different ideas about what relationships look like, in no small part because of their very different family backgrounds. Of course they could talk about these differences—if Penn knew how to talk about feelings.

Harper and Penn understand their attraction is illogical, yet something keeps pulling them together. It’s like a crazy roller coaster—exhilarating, terrifying, and amazing all at once. And neither knows how to stop the ride…

Novel provided by Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review Opening Thoughts I went into this book expecting a light, fun contemporary, but I didn't get that with this book. I had heard some pretty negative things from several people that I trust, so I went into this books with expectations at rock bottom. However, the first thirty pages seemed promising. The seemingly beginning of Penn and Harper's relationship was cute and I their characters were cute, if a bit annoying. Sadly, it quickly went downhill, and this book ended up with a 1.5 star rating from me. Characters I did not like either Harper or Penn. They are such stereotypical characters, and I've read quite a few books with characters like them recently and I'm so sick of them, though I believe I would have hated them despite that. Harper is the classic good girl, who doesn't ever do anything wrong, and is essentially the perfect person, and lets everyone she knows down by dating Penn. She was so naive and annoying, and she kept going back to Penn over and over and over again, even as he continued to push her away and hurt her. I didn't understand why she didn't just dump him, she became a character that had no backbone, and let a guy become the center of her world. Penn is the typical resident bad boy with the troubled past and bad home life, nothing I haven't seen, oh say, five million times. I didn't really find him attractive so I couldn't relate to Harper's attraction to him. He was so hot and cold, more cold than hot, though he was charming at times, he wasn't more often than not. He used his injured shoulder as an excuse so many times, and the first or even second time he used it, I could kind of sympathize with him, but by the tenth time, I was just done with him. Plot This book isn't very long, but it's still almost 300 pages and I felt like pretty much nothing happened. I was really bored for a lot of it, but I kept on reading because it's a review book and I like to at least try to get them finished. But this book was really, really boring. The kind of beginning for Penn and Harper's relationship was when Penn convinces Harper to ditch school and they kiss and BOOM! Harper is in love. I don't know that Penn thought that he was in love but he started getting all possessive and crap over Harper, so it was definitely more than someone should have felt after one kiss a couple of hours after you meet a person. So, yes there was insta-love, and yes it was horrid. I didn't feel any chemistry between Harper and Penn, they claimed to be in love with each other but I didn't believe it. I thought that the writing was overly simplistic, and better suited for a younger audience. Overall, I did not enjoy this book. The writing was subpar, the plot was unoriginal, and I didn't like the characters. I would recommend it to people who really enjoy this kind of plot line, or people who are fans of Lauren Barnholdt, though I wouldn't get your hopes up too much because I've heard that this is one of her worst books. This was my first Lauren Barnholdt book and I do think I'll pick up one of her other, more loved books in the future.