Book Review: Where You’ll Find Me by Erin Fletcher

Where You’ll Find Me can be summarized in two sentences.

1. Broken girl trying to escape meets boy who really manages to escape.

2. Girl starts falling for said boy, while said boy eventually falls victim to his secrets.

Basically, Hanley Helton finds a boy, Nathan, in her garage. She falls in love with him and discovers his secret while uncovering her own.

My review, on the other hand, is at least four hundred words long. While Where You’ll Find Me does have its merits, it also has unavoidable flaws. Let’s start off with its merits.

First off, Where You’ll Find Me is set in Michigan! Do you know how unique that is? As a Michigander, I feel my state is extremely left out of the book world. Where You’ll Find Me now holds a special place in my literary heart due to its setting. Ferndale, Troy and Traverse City were mentioned! It’s clear Erin Fletcher has done her research to provide Where You’ll Find Me a great setting.

Another thing unique to Erin Fletcher is her ability to handle multiple situations at once in an elegant manner. Sex, alcohol, suicide, sicknesses? Where You’ll Find Me has it all. Normally I’d feel confused with so many side plots going on. However, Erin Fletcher’s writing had me understanding every single little nuance. Instead of drowning in alcohol (Ed Sheeran’s “Give Me Love”) or drowning in confusion, I guess I’ll be drowning in this review… since I bet it’s super confusing now!

This being said, the feeling I get from Where You’ll Find Me is artificial complexity. Everything just happens. There’s no sense in events happening. It feels as if the author just put in all these controversial ideas to make the book popular, not to genuinely make the reader think. While I do read books about suicide and fugitives and all those topics, those books seem real. And Where You’ll Find Me is not real. It can be compared to a sappy romantic movie that ends in a cheesy ending. Sorry, but Swiss is way better.

As for the characters, Nate and Hanley are about as interesting as every other YA character. In other words, they’re not unique or notable in any way. I had hope that Hanley would be different, but she’s just a failed party girl. Unlike Parker Fadley from Cracked Up To Be, Hanley comes off as boring and uninteresting. Yes, she’s gone through a lot, but she has no personality at the end of the day. As for Nate, he’s just okay. Like Hanley, he is uninteresting. I get that he’s good-looking, but honestly, I don’t appreciate him. He may be a loving guy and all, but I love him just as much as I love white-out. I could do without both.

This all being said, Where You’ll Find Me is a thought-provoking, new read with a lot to offer. Definitely check it out on January 7th!

Rating: 6 out of 10

Publisher: Entangled: Teen (January 7th, 2014)

Length: 211 pages (Kindle)

Source: Netgalley

Genre: YA, Romance