I adored this book.
I read it in one afternoon, in under 6 hours, because I just could not put it down.
Astrid Jones is a seventeen year old high school senior growing up in the Middle Of Nowhere Small Town USA. Otherwise known as Unity Valley. She was born in New York and simply does not fit in Unity Valley, as she is very shy and reserved. Her family is very dysfunctional, with a father who secretly smokes pot in the garage, a slightly crazy mother who is much too involved in Astrid's personal affairs, and a sister who has basically rejected Astrid to side with their mother. As a way of coping with her problems and when she wants to clear her head, Astrid lies on the picnic table in the backyard and sends love to the passengers in the airplanes passing by. Because Astrid does not fit in with her town, her family or society in general. Because there is someone who has taken her heart. Someone that she met at work. Someone named Dee Roberts. Someone who is a girl.
Astrid does not know if she is gay. She just knows that she has fallen in love with a girl. And that she can't tell anyone in Unity Valley, because that just isn't done. It's not as if no one is gay; her friends Kristina and Justin are, even though they pretend to be a couple for the benefit of their close-minded peers.
This book follows Astrid and her journey to self-discovery, as cheesy as that sounds. She learns who she is, what she believes and what she wants from life. She learns that having a reputation, or being sneered at in a high school in a small town in the middle of the country does not last forever. Which is why I love this book.
My dad said something to me at the beginning of last year when I started high school. "It's only four years of your life." That doesn't seem like very much of an inspirational quote, but that is what's kept me level headed and sane for the last year and a half. Four years of high school. That's nothing. So what if people don't like your clothes, or your hair, or whatever? It really doesn't matter. It may hurt a bit at the time, but there's so much more to life than the four years that you're stuck with a whole mess of people who probably won't remember you by the time you turn 20.
That's why I related to Astrid. She's realizing that in the grand scheme of things, what matters isn't making others - that you don't necessarily like you - happy: it's making yourself happy, and living the life you want to live. If that means that you want to marry your girlfriend and go against society's rules, so be it. Why should it matter to other people? You're not impeding on their happiness by having yours.
Other than that very powerful message, the book was just very well written. It's a strangely uplifting book, in a way. There are parts where you genuinely smile because of the way that Astrid sees the world. After I finished it, I closed it and kept it in my hands, because I didn't want it to end. It was just a very powerful and thought-provoking book. I recommend it to anyone and everyone. Well, maybe stick an age limit there, like 14 maybe. It's a teen book, not a kid's book. There are very real issues in there that require a certain degree of maturity.
Overall, a wonderful read.
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