4.5 Stars!

I loved this story so much! Teacher/Student romance are some of my favorite type of books but this one is special. I loved love the heroine so much, the hero was driving me mad at times but in the end he still had my heart. The twist at the end I didn’t really saw coming, it left me with all sorts of happy feels. Highly recommend to anyone looking for touchy story of love, life and destiny.

Blue was dealt a shitty card from day one. Pretty tragic story for a young lady. Blue doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know her real name or when she was born. Abandoned at two and raised by a drifter, she didn't attend school until she was ten years old. During her final year in high school she met a young history teacher, Wilson. Their relationship started out rough. With no mother, no father, no faith, and no future Blue was rebellious. Thankfully, Wilson is smart – he understands Blue more than she understands herself. Slowly, they form a friendship. Wilson really took Blue under his wings and never left her side. I adore both the hero and heroine. Blue is vulnerable understandably but also smart, sassy, passionate. Wilson is so amazing. He is strong, intelligent (did not become a teacher at 22 for no reason), patience, caring. I love that their relationship built slowly over time, not the usually not and heavy or insta-love right of the bat. The chemistry and the attraction are definitely there but it was refreshing to see the realistic progression from the beginning until the end. This one is more than a romance – a stunning story of friendship, self-discovery, redemption and finding love. Beautifully written!

It started off pretty good,Blue is a broken girl, who's never truly known who she was, where she belong. After finding herself alone for the second time in her life, she's managed to create this big facade of an uninterested and bitchy girl. She's had to build up this wall so she wouldn't be hurt ever again. Then we have the gorgeous British history teacher. He's new in school and his methods are completely different to what everyone's accustomed to. He's charming and sweet and caring. Also, he's 22.. who is 22 and a eacher??? who?

Ok so, like I said, everything started off pretty good. The story itself was entertaining enough, but nothing remarkable about it. At the beginning of it, the story started having a lot trips to the past and I felt like sometimes it got a bit confusing and I started to get a bit distracted. The writing wasn't all that clear and sometimes it dragged a lot in details that weren't or didn't feel all that relevant. Also, I felt like there were a lot of things that were there just to fill some kind of hole and wasn't even necessary

*DNF*

Copy kindly received via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Not for me. The story feels like its dragging, and I'm just not really into it. I've seen tonnes of really great reviews for this, so I'm a bit disappointed, but not every book is for everyone, and I guess I'm in the small majority who that rings true for with this book.

Amy Harmon really knows how to write character that you become obsess with! Blue' story was an gripping and amazing story that was told. While there were some issues with the time jumps that confused me at times, Amy Harmon created a beautiful and heart-wrenching story that I could not put down until I finished it and wish there were more

Blue is a character I won't soon forget! Her love story with Wilson is an enduring one and it was amazing to read their journey! It's a push and pull and a fight for love that matters!

A Different Blue is one of my favorites from Amy Harmon. If you've never read a book by this author, this is a good one to start with. There are taboo elements that will keep you riveted. Amy Harmon is truly talented, her characters are always layered with complexity. She is easily a one-click author!

No review was posted publicly on Amazon, Twitter or Goodreads for this title, unfortunately I never got round to finishing it, and feel it would be best to just remove it from my Negalley shelf without a review.

The author is hit and miss for me, and this one never really grabbed my attention from the get-go.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley for an honest review.

I thought with all the good reviews, I thought, I would really enjoy this but alas I was mostly indifferent. This read more like a soap opera to me then real life with all the drama going on at exactly the most horrible times. We are meant to feel sorry for Blue and while her back ground story was sad I just never felt invested.

Wilson was just kinda clueless while trying to be the cool teacher (with handkerchiefs) and the whole Pride and Prejudice nod was just unnecessary, in my opinion. Just because he’s British doesn’t mean we need to bring Jane Austen into it. Manny and Gabriela are never heard from again and frankly, I thought they were the most interesting characters in the book.

Oh well, it just wasn’t my cup of tea.

Wow! Amy Harmon's A Different Blue was indeed precious. I never knew I needed it until now. It's truly inspiring and uplifting. Blue's story was a burst of light in an endless void.

Blue didn't know who she really was. Abandoned by her mother inside a stranger's truck when she was around two years old, Blue found herself eventually loved by this man as if she was his own daughter.

Many years later, on her last year of high school, the now closed-off Blue met Darcy Wilson, her new history teacher, who challenged the tough girl in her to open up. She found herself unravelling her story to him in the form of a blackbird's tale.

This wa a journey of friendship, love, choices, and finding one's self.

Blue was a very complex character. As I was reading the book, I felt her emotions as if they were being etched onto my skin. She was a beautiful wreckage left by a tornado in some unknown location.

Wilson was someone I think any romance fan would appreciate. First of all, he was a history and literature nerd, and I think that's very charming of him. He was also kind, caring, patient, and understanding. Of course, he had his own flaws and the author used those imperfections of his to develop their relationship and Blue's character as well.

Blue and Wilson's romance is perfectly slow-paced. It will keep you anticipating due to the time it took for them to gradually know each other and fall in love. It was also intimate without being sexual. Surprisingly, although this is more of a new adult read, I found it to be more chaste than a number of young adult books nowadays.

Blue's choices, both the little and the big ones, affected everyone around her in ways that are so realistic and practical. She had regrets but she grew up because of them. She learned to be who she chose to be. I think this made her story very relatable.

This inspiring friends-to-lovers romance is a must-read. I now understand the hype and can't wait to read Amy Harmon's other books.

Honestly, this is a trope that is done way too much, some girl has a bad past and she decides that she is now a bad ass so she is grumpy about everything. I'm tired of hearing the same story with different names

Love this, I'd read it when it first came out, and I enjoyed the new additions.

What an amazing story!! Amy Harmon is a must buy author for me. Her words are beautifully written and leave you wanting more!

“But there's no way to avoid regret. Don't let anybody tell you different. Regret is just life's aftertaste. No matter what you choose, you're gonna wonder if you shoulda done things different. I didn't necessarily choose wrong. I just chose. And I lived with my choice, aftertaste and all.”

When I read the summary for A Different Blue, I thought I would get a student/teacher love story, that I would feel a thousand emotions at once (it's Amy Harmon, after all), but I got so much more out of the story than I thought I would. It was my third novel by Amy Harmon, and once again, she surprised me in a good way. Before I really start my review, I would like to say that no words could actually describe all that I felt during this novel. It was an emotional rollercoaster and this story will definitely stay with me for a long time.

Blue Echohawk is quite an interesting character throughout all the story. When A Different Blue starts, you discover a young girl completely lost because she literally doesn't know who she is (she was abandoned when she was two years old), who seems to care about next to nothing, that sexy rebel girl who has sex and is unapologetic for it. She was the subject of slut-shaming sometimes and I liked that this topic was addressed a little, because by being unapologetic about her relationships, Blue showed that she was an independent girl who could do what she wanted and to hell with the rest of the world. In short, not the typical innocent and naïve heroine for sure. Blue was made tougher by all the hardships she had to get through in her life, and those are not over yet, to say the least. Despite that, she's a sensitive character, who loves to express herself through her art and just doesn't have anyone to talk to. In A Different Blue, she tries to find herself, tries to understand that despite the odds, she deserves so much more from the world and has the right to ask for it.

The novel follows Blue from her senior year to about a year after that, which makes it a realistic story, for all the character development makes sense. This contemporary novel delivered so much more than what I expected, and more than a romance, this is the story of how to find yourself when it seems that no one wanted you and you don't even know your real name. It tackled down so many important contemporary issues that I won't list here (it's for the reader to discover, after all), but once again, Amy Harmon took me by surprise and delivered an amazing novel. It's frustrating because I can't talk about the pivotal moment in A Different Blue, but I definitely didn't expect that.

Moving on to Wilson, the love interest. I enjoyed his character, but in theory, I should have loved him. He's a 22 year old history teacher with an English accent, he cares for his students (especially Blue), he decided not to become a doctor to work with the Peace Cops in Africa before coming to America to teach. The moment I discovered his actual first name, I realised that the author had tried to make him perfect, but it didn't work for me. That was the problem. At some point, he said “perfect is boring” and I couldn't agree more. Yes, I enjoyed most aspect of his personnality, but he was too much. At some point, he made a slut-shaming comment (which made me so mad, obviously) and that's the only moment of the novel when he wasn't perfect.

Despite that, I absolutely loved Blue and Wilson's relationship. At the beginning of the novel, Wilson was her teacher and while you could feel the attraction between them (he was only older by three years), nothing happened and I really enjoyed that. You see them becoming friends and that Wilson is trying to support Blue in any way he can considering his position, but the romance doesn't start there. He helps her grow a lot, because he's the first friend she ever had and by that, she discovers that she is worth it. I'm not going to lie though, all I wanted was for them to kiss because I could feel the tension and I needed it to explode.

Overall, I loved A Different Blue so much, it had an interesting and complex main character, a suspenseful coming-of-age story as Blue was trying to understand where she came from and who she was deep down and a great dynamic between Blue and her love interest. Wilson was a little too perfect for me at first, but other than that, it was a great contemporary novel I would recommend.

Amy Harmon is a lovely writer and I always enjoy her stories.

Sorry I could not give a review as this was not compatible with my Kindle.

A Different Blue is such an amazing story! The history lessons and how it ties in with Wilson's assignments were such a treat! Every teenager needs a teacher like Wilson and to learn the lessons that he teaches. Blue is such a character of strength and vulnerability all at the same time. This is a story that I will recommend over and over and is definitely in my top ten favorites!

This is one of the best books I read this year. The writing style was so gripping and poetic and beautiful. I couldn't help but admire the characters -strongly. The plot twist was incredible, the history lessons and the anecdotes... They were all mind-blowing.

Type of book new adult, high school, contemporary, romance
Stand Alone

Darcy Wilson is a history teacher. Originally from England, now living in Boulder City, NV. He forms a bond with Blue Echohawk, a student who is obviously struggling in many ways. He honestly wants to be that person in her life to help her turn hers around for the better. After some unfortunate events, Wilson invites her to be a tenant in his building. Their mentoring friendship develops into more from there - very slowly, and appropriately. Wilson begins as a protective big brother type figure. He is willing to help Blue out in anyway. He’s not dominant or in your face, but rather calm and guiding. However, he is a bit wishy-washy at times, trying to figure out what is appropriate and trying to act respectfully.

Blue Echohawk doesn’t really know who she is. Her mother died when she was young and she was raised by a man named Jimmy Echohawk. Her life is a constant struggle in almost every way. She has no support at home, no support at school, and finds herself in the most unfortunate of relationships. Nothing seems to go her way, yet she battles through. She makes a name for herself through her art. She continues to fight to make her life better, leaving behind the negativity and disrespect that she commands with her actions, but doesn’t really deserve. She goes through so much from her young childhood through high school - and mostly on her own.

This book felt like two short novellas pieced together. The first half tells the story of young Blue interspersed with the beginnings of her interactions with Wilson. We get to know who she really is and why she is this way. Then the story takes a turn and continues in the present only. We see Blue struggle through high school and bad decisions. Finally things seem to begin to go in the right direction for Blue as she really works to find out who she is.

This is seriously a slow burn. SLOW. Sure, there’s a bit of steam, but not with the characters you are hoping. Finally. Finally, the love connection you’re hoping for actually happens. It’s a bit steamy but it’s so much more than that.

Overall:
It took me a bit to really get into this book. I understand the background in the first half was really needed to tell the story. I enjoyed the characters and how they connected and interacted with each other. I definitely enjoyed the second half of the book when the plot really started moving along.