book review // the geography of you and me by jennifer e. smith

title: the geography of you and me
author: jennifer e. smith
publisher: headline
publication date: april 10th 2014
pages: 352
source // format: for review, paperback

summary: owen lives in the basement. lucy lives on the 24th floor. but when the power goes out in the midst of a new york heatwave, they find themselves together for the first time: stuck in a lift between the 10th and 11th floors. as they await help, they start talking...
the brief time they spend together leaves a mark. and as their lives take them to edinburgh and san francisco, to prague and to portland they can't shake the memory of the time they shared. postcards cross the globe when they themselves can't, as owen and lucy experience the joy - and pain - of first love.
and as they make their separate journeys in search of home, they discover that sometimes it is a person rather than a place that anchors you most in the world. -goodreads

The Geography of You and Me is probably my second favourite of jennifer e. smith's books; this is what happy looks like being my favourite. i think what drew me to this book was its freshness. it was written well, the characters made me love the book even more. the only thing that irked me slightly at one point was the repetition of "in [country], owen/lucy [verb]". one one level i thought it was clever, the way the author mirrored their lives and reduced them to action verbs to vivify their emptiness and make it feel more realistic. but the repetition also made me feel a little disgruntled at times as i felt like the chapters needed different beginnings otherwise there was the danger of them all blending into one.

overall however, i loved it. the whole idea behind the story, the characters, the quirky things they both did. [i really really want someone to send me postcards now. i loved them before but this book emphasized and highlighted my love for them]. something i would loved to have seen in this book would have been the postcards themselves. instead of text indicating the message, i think it would have added a little extra something to the book if the postcards they had sent each other had been replicated and dotted around the pages. if you don't mind reading fluffy books once in a while then jennifer e. smith's are the ones for you. because while the plot is interesting enough, the endings are always rather unrealistic . so if this type of book annoys you: a fairytale-esque story with a definite probability of a happy ever after - then i wouldn't advise you to pick up this book. however, once in a while it's nice to read something that doesn't involve blood and death and fighting for survival right?
in a gif i would describe this book like this. rating: ★★★★

many thanks to bookbridgr and headline for providing a copy of this book for review purposes.