All This Time

What I loved most about this book was the characters, while the writing was really enjoyable and not too much to take in, the characters really sold it for me. They were all flawed and complex and they all made mistakes and this made them feel human and real. There were times when you loved them, times when you hated them, and that’s just the human experience so I loved how all the characters were written.

I do feel the need to comment on the writing again, though. While my favourite aspect was the characters, the writing was such an important part. There was something they included in the tone which tells you to prepare for something, that tells you things are a little off and to pay attention. But when the turning point finally hit, for me specifically, it was nowhere near what I expected. I was sat there just staring at the screen trying to process what I read knowing that it completely blindsided me, my brain expecting a completely different turn of events, and I really loved that. Books that take me by surprise really do become favourites and highly rated.

This book would be a 5-star read if there wasn’t this lull in the first third that made it hard for me to get through and keep reading. I stuck at it, knowing there was a really strong chance finishing it would be worth my time, but it did feel like it was dragging on, that’s the only criticism I have for this whole book.

This was an emotional, heartbreaking YA novel. I was drawn in by the interesting plot, and was not disappointed.

The characters are great and the story is interesting. It made me mad at times, but that's to be expected with this type of book.

I really enjoyed the writing style too.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a copy of this E-book to review via Netgalley.

ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

I was so excited to read this book.

I read Five Feet Apart back in 2019 and I loved it. It was everything that I wanted from a YA contemporary and it definitely changed my mind on the cancer kids in love trope that was first set up by John Green when The Fault in Our Stars was released. With another book by Mikki Daughtry and Rachael Lippincott on the way, I had high expectations for it and I was happy when it lived up to them.

All This Time follows main character, Kyle, the perfect boyfriend to Kimberly and popular boy at school. He has always thought their relationship would last... until it doesn't. When Kimberly breaks up with him, his whole world turns upside down as their car crashes and Kyle is the only one who is still alive. Still reeling from Kimberly's death and dealing with a serious brain injury, Kyle confides in Marley, a girl he sees around the hospital. As the two help patch each other's wounds, a spark of romance blooms between them and Kyle is left wondering if he is headed for another crash moment in his life.

My main issue with this book was with the story itself. Whilst being beautifully written, I found that the second part of the book didn't make sense with a lot of things not adding up. Where in the first part, we were seeing Kyle processing the death of his ex-girlfriend and learning to open up again, in the second part we saw him trying to find Marley again in a world vastly different to the one that happened straight after the car crash. I wondered if everything that happened after the first part was really necessary. If the book kept to just the first part then I reckon I would've liked it and rated it even higher since the second part didn't make any sense to me.

I cannot reason with you why I didn't like part 2 without disclosing some spoilers. In the simplest of terms, this part felt very fairytale like and very unrealistic. After waking up to the reality of a world without Marley in it, Kyle tries finding her again and when he does, he tries and tries again to tell her that they met before in his dreams. I found it unrealistic that somehow in some way, Marley realises that she actually does know Kyle and they form a relationship just like that. If you don't mind technicalities then I'm sure you would love this book but for me, as some who deems herself to be a logical minded reader and reviewer, I couldn't give this book the love it surely deserved. I wanted to know how they could've connected on that kind of level, how Marley remembered Kyle out of nowhere, just like magic. I wanted an explanation and it frustrated me that I never got one.

Going on with the story here, I found the plot to be pretty predictable. I already assumed what would happen by page 100 and my predictions weren't wrong. While predictability isn't necessary a bad thing in a book, I expected more from it, something to surprise or shock me but as I read on, even the second part of the book didn't make me do a double take because I knew that plot twist was coming up. I predicted that what I was reading in part 1 wasn't the whole story and I was right. I could tell it was coming from the start and to prove myself right, I started using a check-list of sorts as I mentally ticked off all of my predictions and smiled whenever I got them right.

Whilst part 1 was great in terms of story, I found that character wise it fell a little bit flat. I got really annoyed by Kyle's character at the start. I found him to be whiny and annoying and I started to dislike his narrative voice. Thankfully, in the second part he got better and he became a much more readable character in my opinion but it still didn't make up for the second part of the book which, as I mentioned before, confused me a lot.

All in all, I did enjoy this book and thought it was beautifully written but there were some parts that didn't steal my heart namely with the characters, plot predictability and the technicalities of part 2.

ACTUAL RATING: 3.8 STARS