I jumped at the chance to review this book because I’ve been a long-time fan of Katie McGarry’s phenomenal book Pushing the Limits and perhaps this is where my fault lies. I couldn’t help my high expectations after reading a book by her that meant so much to me when I was younger.
Echoes Between Us follows Veronica who can see ghosts, in particular her dead mother. She also lives with a benign tumour in her brain that causes chronic migraines that keep her from being accepted by her schoolmates. Enter bad boy Sawyer, who likes to jump off cliffs and is the most popular guy at school, and he pairs up with Veronica for an English AP project. Veronica is a girl with little life left and Sawyer is willing to risk it all – can they complete each other in the end?
Echoes Between Us, in the kindest wording possible, reads like an early 2000s young adult contemporary would read. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, except the fact that the book felt very outdated. Now, there is no reason to write a book reminiscent of earlier tropes in young adult literature, but this was just a painfully obvious and formulaic story stuck in the 2000s that it covered every cliché. If executed well, that’s not a problem. But this time around, it just felt bland.
The cast of characters was exactly what you’d expect: a vulnerable protagonist (who here deals with a terminal illness which I thought was going to be so interesting to read about but turned out to be a plot point to get the love triangle going and keep the fire of boys making girls feel unlovable stoked); a “bad” boy (who is actually a great guy that takes care of his mother and his little sister and does not at any point of this book or the past do anything remotely bad?); a jealous male best friend who keeps telling the protagonist that he is confused and doesn’t know what to do (though dating other girls and partying it up sounds like a good idea to him while guilting Veronica into being celibate); and the quirky sidekick of the love interest who is gay for the sole purpose of reducing her to every stereotype there ever was.
There was a lot to handle within the plot – Veronica’s chronic headaches, her ability to see ghosts (adding a paranormal element to the story that was either ridiculed or exploited to make her more of a ‘weirdo’), a group of friends that seems to accept her brain tumour but also doesn’t, and Sawyer’s impulse to jump off bridges and cliffs for kicks.
McGarry has a tendency to repeat certain phrases but I really hope that editing will go over this book once more because at one point I got so obsessed with a phrase describing Sawyer’s desire to jump off cliffs that I started highlighting it for a few chapters and came up to a count of 87 references to it. We get it, he likes the adrenaline rush and can’t stop. Overall, I feel like this book would be more suited to middle schoolers because the characters behaved very inexperienced and not like teenagers. There was also almost no personality change between the two POVs and if there weren’t headers over the chapters, I would have had no idea whether it was Veronica or Sawyer.
Speaking of the characters, no one acted how they were described, either. Veronica is described and claims herself as quirky – beyond the fact that she celebrates holidays at self-determined times during the year, there is nothing quirky about her. Sawyer is the proclaimed golden AND bad boy yet he never does anything to be revered or punished. Veronica’s best friend with whom she is in love with for half the book never says anything romantic (unless you count that part about him never being able to love her because she has a brain tumour and how no one else could ever love her). Sawyer’s best friend, equally, is just constantly used for gay bashing. His manipulative mother keeps trying to get them together even though she knows Sylvia is gay. What, exactly, was the point of that storyline except making LGBTQ+ people feel annoyed?
All in all, certainly not my favourite McGarry book but I appreciate it for what it was trying to do and it was nice to get back into the early YA mindset for a while. My, how far we have come since those days where bad boys were just good boys who called themselves bad and best friends kept telling you that you’re unlovable because of something you have no control over. Thank the author community for expanding on these stereotypes and making them their own.
Echoes Between Us is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of January 14th 2020.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Echoes Between Us is bestselling author Katie McGarry’s breakout teen contemporary novel about a girl with everything to lose and the boy who will do anything to save her.
Veronica sees ghosts. More specifically, her mother’s ghost. The afterimages of blinding migraines caused by the brain tumor that keeps her on the fringes and consumes her whole life haunt her, even as she wonders if it’s something more…
Golden boy Sawyer is handsome and popular, a state champion swimmer, but his adrenaline addiction draws him to Veronica.
A girl with nothing to live for and a boy with everything to lose–can they conquer their demons together?
