I Like You Like This chronicles the life of teenager who's parents not only verbally abuse her but abandon her emotionally as well. Her struggle to fit in includes experimenting with drugs. You keep hoping for some great insight into if it is possible that her parents can truly be this horrible, but they just don't give you any excuses to love them.

So she falls for the first person to really give her any type of attention - her newly found drug dealer who turns into her boyfriend.

There's plenty of drama in this book with mean girl attitudes, parties, sex and drugs. Add to that plenty of the "F" bomb and more it adds up to quite the trashy read.

Their relationship, as dysfunctional as it is, actually did seem very real while the relationship with her parents just rang false.

I received an ARC of this book in exchange of my honest review.

It took me a couple of weeks to finish this book since my daily life's been busy and chaotic with too many things to do at once. The book is surely on the slow pace side after the main characters get together. You can feel it's the author debut novel because it's simple, on the safe side and predictable.

For me it's the kind of book you read when you just finished a very heavy one and you want to just slow down and relax a little bit with a mellow book. Which annoys me a little bit in this book because the author chose to talk about very good taboo things in it. Bullying. Self hate. Drugs. Parenthood. All these teenage drama that turns the person forever when it reaches its adulthood.

I was very excited in the beginning when I started reading thinking she would go deeper into Hannah's family story in ignoring and shaming her, making her feel so worthless that through the book you get so blue reading her self-hate. Then you have Deacon with a family that didn't want him in the first place and for being so lost since he was a child he turned into being a drug dealer to feel power and control over his life. Both just teenagers wanting a little of love, caring and respect. Hannah is always looking for someone's approval, for someone to just notice her and that makes he do anything to try it in the beginning of it, that's how her path crosses with Deacon because the mean/popular girls didn't think she would actually get high.

Something obviously goes wrong and they start caring for each other. The author focused more in their quick, sparkly passion than into the topics I really thought she would go through. I was there desperately waiting for Hanna to step up, to shine through herself and just learn to accept her for her, she was there waiting for her parents approval and after it was Deacon's.

He was very mercurial, very black and white. Sometimes I wanted to just shake him to make him snap out of it. We have another character coming through the story with a troubled past too but I won't get deeper there because it's a twist in the story, I saw it coming right from the middle of the book, but it might be a surprise for some people. A handsome guy that chose to be a loner.

I just wish it could have shown some more of the family, of the bullying, of the teachers doing something which annoys me of how blindly they were through the book. Addiction, depression, self-hate are real things we should start talking about and most of it start in high school when no one is paying attention to the easy target for bullies.

Overall I liked the writing style, it was very simple, it was flowing nicely, the author is very promising if she learns how to swing by the romance in the story and the heavy talk when she choses to approach in her future books. Everyone loves a romance, but it's time to have more than that.

Hannah gets herself at the end but I hated how quickly that happened, like a click in her head and that was the end. I think she could have done that a bit better and more complex, a working in progress for the readers to appreciate and inspire people reading it.

It's a very typical story of high school love and the end is an open one that gets you wondering what might happen to every character in the story since there's no ending to any of them. I'm still in the fence about the ending since for me it all finished like a big question mark over everything.

I would for sure give the author another try because I think she will do wonderful stories once she gets the hang of delivering everything the book has to offer in romantic and heavy talk so I can't wait for next books to come and for the progress to happen!

Wow! I loved this book! The story was original and refreshing to have a story take place in the 80s. I enjoyed our heroine 's journey towards self loving. The ending was a little confusing at first. Is it a set up for a sequel or a way to have an open ended happy ending?

I liked that the book followed two perspectives and you saw what was happening in both their lives and the way they saw the same event. Personally, I didn't enjoy this book as drugs was featured heavily at the start of the book and it goes against my personal values.

***I received a complimentary copy of I LIKE YOU LIKE THIS by Heather Cumiskey in exchange for my honest review***

In 1984, Hannah, an emotionally abused teenager, hoping to become popular befriends Deacon, the local drug dealer.

I was in undergrad in 1984, so I remember that era fairly well. I'm not sure why Cumiskey chose to set her story during that heat, unless she didn't want to use technology in the plot. Aside from lack of electronics and throwing in a few blasts from the past, like Endless Love's Christopher Atkins, I'm not sure why the year mattered. She used a few slang words from the 80s, but also terms that weren't used until later.

I wasn't a fan of Cumiskey' writing style which didn't hold my interest. There was a stark lack of tension and an abundant use of passive voice. She did an adequate job of showing vs telling, but it wasn't enough to interest me. The characters felt flat. I can't think of a reason to recommend I LIKE YOU LIKE THIS.