3.25/5

After finishing this book, it took me a while to wrap my head around my rating for this one. I had a fun time reading this book but it didn't hook me. I was able to put it down for a couple of days before going back to it. Having said that, it was definitely a good filler book in between my other reads.

A good read about grief and loved one's and about connecting through loss. I would have loved to get more of Jason and Emily’s because I wanted to know so much more. It covers a very tough subject and does it in a beautiful way.

This was really sweet and made me feel happy while reading it, which feels like an odd thing to say considering some of the theme within this novel.

Where the main characters wouldn't even be on each other's radars except that their siblings committed suicide together, and boy does this book deal with the heavy stuff and the grief so well. And yet my main takeaway from this was happiness and just light.

Thank you so much for allowing me to read and review your titles.
I do appreciate it and continue to review books that I get the chance to read.
Thanks again!

I love books that cover hard topics. It seems like there aren’t nearly enough of them, especially when it comes to YA. So glad to have met this book.

My favorite thing about this novel is that it’s an excellent portrayal of grief. In some novels, characters seem to move past losing a loved one so easily and quickly. However, in So Glad to Meet You, Daphne and Oliver are still trying to cope with the loss of their siblings seven years later. The author shows how the trauma of losing Emily and Jason affects their actions all this time later and I thought their search for closure was very realistic.

One thing that I disliked about this novel is that I thought Emily and Jason’s suicides would be the main focus of the book. While their deaths do drive Daphne and Oliver’s actions, I feel that the author spends more time focusing on the romance between Daphne and Oliver. That being said, I did end up really liking them as a couple and I was rooting for them to get together. I just expected this book to be somewhat heavy as far as content and it was kind of light. I think that I would have taken more away from the book if there was a bit less of a focus on the romance and a bit more focus on the loss of their siblings.

As far as the characters, Daphne was definitely my favorite. She was smart and quirky, two traits that I love in main characters. While she stood out from the other characters in this book for me, I unfortunately don’t feel that any of the characters were really memorable overall. They were fun to read about, but none of them really stand out to me as characters that will stay with me for a long time.

The final aspect of this book that kept me from giving it more stars was the writing. It honestly just didn’t flow well. The transitions from one from topic to the next were very choppy. In all fairness, this is the author’s debut novel and I did read an advanced copy so this may be improved in the final copies.

Overall, I found the concept of this book to be very interesting. I thought it was an honest portrayal of grief. I also really liked the characters and the romance between Daphne and Oliver. However, I thought there was room for improvement with the writing. I ultimately rated it three stars because while I found it to be enjoyable, I do not think it made a lasting impact on me.

4/5 stars! really enjoyed this one back in the day. sweet story about coping and finding comfort in the most unexpected places. would deffo recommend for a light hearted but meaningful read.

I really enjoyed the story of Daphne and Oliver, who lost their older brother and sister to suicide several years ago.

Their families are still deeply affected by the deaths of the older children. I enjoyed how the book flipped back and forth from now to then where it showed snippets of Emily and Jason when they were alive, snippets of their lives before they were ended.

Daphne comes across a bucket list and is compelled to finish it in Emily's memory. Oliver joins in and it was a sweet book really with some angst and sadness at how the families are living in the aftermath of the suicicdes.


Seeing them work on the bucket list was fun and made the book less heavy.
I did NOT like Oliver in the beginning, he grew on me smewhere in the book though.

so this was an enjoyable way to while away an extremely hot summer afternoon.

My thanks for netgally for the free ebook in a exchanbe for an honest review.




back cover
++++++Seventeen-year-old Daphne Bowman, a bookish drama nerd in public school, might never have crossed paths with Oliver, the popular, outgoing mascot for his private school's football team, but one event has bound them inextricably. Daphne's older sister, Emily, and Oliver's older brother, Jason, who were high school sweethearts, died by suicide together seven years earlier.

When Daphne uncovers Emily and Jason's bucket list—a list comprised of their "Top Ten" places to visit before they die—she knows she has to tell someone. The one person who might actually get what she's going through and who might not think it's silly that she wants to complete the list, is also someone she's never spoken to—Oliver Pagano. Throwing caution to the wind, Daphne sends Oliver a Facebook message that will come to change the course of both of their senior years—and maybe their entire lives.

Tackling grief with a wry voice and an unflinching eye, So Glad to Meet You tells the story of two people who, in searching for what they've lost, end up finding what they never knew they needed—each other.

For a book dealing with the aftermath of teen suicide, I was expecting this to be a more emotionally-charged read but it was more of a typical YA romance in the end, struggling to address the elephant in the room. I couldn't get on with the clunky writing style.

The Plot

I was really in the mood for a good emotional contemporary and I feel that this book hit the nail right on the head.

Daphne & Oliver have one thing in common. Their siblings. Daphne’s Sister, Emily and Oliver’s brother, Jason were dating when they died. Daphne discovers an artifact that the two had shared and feels that she should not keep it to herself. So she hunts down Oliver and thus begins a beautiful relationship.
The Characters

I really loved both of these characters even though they were so different in many ways. They had a ton of really meaningful conversations and were wise way beyond their years.

Daphne loved her sister but is so fearful that she will end up like her. She has a whole life to live and she literally counts down the years until she makes it past the age her sister was when she died. Her home life sucks because her parent’s became really strict after the death of Emily. Her Dad is an alcoholic and her Mom is basically non-existent in her life.

Oliver lives in his brother’s shadow and feels that his parents put Jason on this pedestal. He will never live up to their standards because Jason will have always been so good at everything. He has vowed to himself that he will not be his brother and does everything the exact opposite of Jason.

The most refreshing part of this book would have to be the friendship that the two had formed over such a tragedy. AND the road trips!!! I adore books where the characters take any type of trips to do or see something unique and meaningful.
In Conclusion

This book is a whole mess of emotions. It is about family and how everyone copes after a loss. It is about friendship and learning to forgive and work through problems and trust. It was also about love and learning to over come your fears and just go with it.

I finished this book in one day because I was so invested in these characters. I am currently on the lookout for more books like this one. If you know of any, please send them my way.

I've become a bit hesitant of YA novels that use death or suicide as some sort of a plot device, so when I jumped into this, I was surprised that I actually found the story intriguing. However, the characters weren't engaging enough for me to connect, and thought the rest of the book was pretty predictable.

I loved this one so much. It warms my heart to no end, I absolutely loved it! It made me cry and laugh and just so warm with joy. I'm so happy I was allowed this one! So good!

This novel follows Daphne and Oliver whose connection with one another is a strange one as their siblings were dating and had committed suicide together. Daphne and Oliver had spent years struggling to get over the deaths of their siblings but they often dealt with it alone as they had never met and the tragedy had only brought on an onslaught of trouble for their individual families. Daphne finds a bucket list written by her sister and Oliver's brother and she finds and enlists the help from Oliver to complete it. Along the way Daphne and Oliver struggle in the absence of their siblings while falling in love.

This story is less about the bucket list and completing the items that had brought them together but more about confronting their grief head on, remembering their siblings, and falling in love. Daphne and Oliver were both enjoyable characters that I looked forward to reading. Their romance was a quick one but not one that didn't have their own set of problems. However, everything seems to move a bit fast. There is a lot of time jumps through the seasons and between the bucket list items and I wished for that time to be utilized more wisely. While all the bucket list plot went extremely fast I believe the romance was at a nice pace being with the problems they encounter. I did enjoy reading this novel a lot and I really loved both Daphne and Oliver.

An interesting concept, but it didn't work for me. I didn't enjoy this story, and never connected with the characters.

Thank you net galley for an advance reader copy of this novel. This novel was a contemporary romance dealing with the suicide of the two main characters siblings. This book has some sex in it and some language. I enjoyed the adventure of the top ten list and the growth of characters. given the dark topic of teen suicide, this book addressed that issue well.

Thank you NetGallery for the chance to review this. I thought the story line was fairly unique, and that it dealt with such a heavy topic in the appropriate way. I was rooting for the two characters from the beginning and I actually found myself investing in what would happen, which wasn't happening for a lot of books. This definitely got me out of a reading slump!

This book has a terrific cover art.

It's beautiful and magical.

I used to hate the fact that every single YA book that's good had a death in it (to think of it, so does this one but not in any tragic way, not the way it's presented here) but I'm starting to see the point about it. Life and Death is the biggest game we all play throughout our given time on this planet, and maybe kids take it a notch higher of its importance during their puberty time. And maybe that's a good thing in their book world - makes things seem deeper, smarter, better, more real and more meaningful. And less like a chat that will be over as soon as the high school's out.

Thank you Netgalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

So Glad to Meet You had a lot going for it, but it didn't come together in a strong way. A central strand was Daphne and Oliver dealing with the circumstances of their older siblings' deaths and mental illness, their own experience of grief, and how they dynamics in their families changed when they became the only living children. Who else has a shot at understanding your situation than someone else who been through it? That promised more than the book delivered. The the older sibling's Top-10 List was a good idea, but it seemed incidental.

The book veers into a romance/sort-of first-love that just didn't work for me, no matter how in charge of her future Emily is and no matter how much Oliver has to learn (or give in? Oliver's anti-boyfriend thing was a bit blurry.). This part of the book just fell flat, yet it really overtakes the last half of the book. There are three different places that could have been endings too. I was reading on an ebook and surprised that there was another chapter or more in that chapter.

Regarding the writing, Super has some great phrasing and sections where the writing is well done and then out of nowhere, parts would be jarring or discordant for no particular reason. It didn't happen often, but it stood out.

Grain-of-Salt Reality Check: I'm in my 40s, not wrapping up high school and figuring out where I'm going to college. Maybe this book would have been more compelling if I were younger.

Keep writing Lisa Super!

This book was just meh for me. I really liked all of the characters, but the plot seemed to just drag on FOREVER! Would still recommend as a cute summer read though ;)

A dark, sad story of two families still trying to recover from the suicide of their oldest kids seven years ago. The story is well constructed, but was too dark for my preference. There are no magical answers coming and the road to recovery is long. This will be a better fit for YA readers who enjoy deeply emotional stories. (Mature content including suicide and sex.)