Written by contributor Belle Ellrich
If you are looking for a YA contemporary romance featuring a booklover and an author with an instant hate-to-love relationship, this book is the perfect fit for you.
Amelia is a recent high school graduate who’s decided that she is going to follow her best friend Jenna’s master plan on what college they’ll attend and what they’ll study. She thinks she has it all figured out, but upon getting into an argument with Jenna that isn’t resolved before Jenna’s unexpected death, she starts to wonder if the path she’s on is really the one for her.
This book starts out at a book festival, and for some of us, we can only dream of being at an in-person book festival again. Amelia and Jenna are waiting for an event with Amelia’s favourite author, N. E. Endsley, to begin so that she can finally meet him and have her book signed. Taking a quick bathroom break, Amelia returns to find out from her best friend and the festival announcer that Endsley’s event has been canceled. It isn’t until their drive home that Amelia finds out Jenna was the reason behind it.
To start, I love drama between friends in books. Perfect relationships don’t exist, and they won’t be believable, in my opinion, if there isn’t a little bit of trouble between the characters. That said, I unexpectedly didn’t like the drama the author created between Amelia and Jenna. It was like reading a badly scripted scene, but I was actually able to hear it in my head and also imagine it. I was a little put off when Amelia got seriously upset with Jenna for consoling someone in the midst of an obvious breakdown. She made it seem like, even though Endsley wasn’t mentally fit to be at the festival, it didn’t matter because she was more important and should’ve been able to meet him. It made me type “Life isn’t all about you, Amelia!” in my notes.
Moving forward, I was very excited when Amelia decided to take an unplanned trip to Michigan to figure out where a mysterious book–that had been shipped to her at her town’s bookstore–came from. Upon arriving at the bookstore in Michigan that the package had stated the book was from, no one gives her the answers she’s looking for. Amelia finds instead an adorable and inviting bookshop with a snappy (in a good way) owner and her skeptical son, along with a slightly overbearing but cute dog named Wally.
This section was quite enjoyable and I think the “mystery” of the bookshop, the unusual 101st copy of Amelia’s favourite book, and the sudden appearance of N. E. Endsley in this small Michigan town were placed and developed well. I was really ensnared in the book at this point, and though Amelia did grind my gears at some points, I thought that Schumacher really did a great job in writing this section.
Unfortunately, past this point is when I felt that things started to go downhill again. The pacing started off well, but then it started to progressively become slower. I’m not the biggest fan, personally, of slower-paced books and began to get bored from it. Along with this, Amelia’s character became pretty frustrating. At multiple points within the book, I felt she was just hanging around Endsley because she wanted to know more about his books in general, as well as her 101st copy. To add to that, she called him “troubled” when referring to his mental crisis back at the book festival. As someone who has mental disorders and lives with them every day, I hate that. It makes me feel like nothing more than someone who needs to be watched 24/7, almost like a dog. And with this, Amelia never once felt regret over how she placed the guilt for Endsley’s mental health disallowing her from originally meeting him on Jenna before her death.
Surprisingly enough, once I got to the ending of the book, I actually felt that the book got much better. Amelia became less insufferable, the romance aspect of the book didn’t feel as forced as it had in the middle of the story, a bit of humour was actually picked up, and the pacing instantly sped up. I was a little disappointed with the epilogue just being a summary of things that happen after their teen years, but overall, it wasn’t that bad!
Amelia Unabridged is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of February 16th 2021.
Will you be picking up Amelia Unabridged? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
Eighteen-year-old Amelia Griffin is obsessed with the famous Orman Chronicles, written by the young and reclusive prodigy N. E. Endsley. They’re the books that brought her and her best friend Jenna together after Amelia’s father left and her family imploded. So when Amelia and Jenna get the opportunity to attend a book festival with Endsley in attendance, Amelia is ecstatic. It’s the perfect way to start off their last summer before college.
In a heartbeat, everything goes horribly wrong. When Jenna gets a chance to meet the author and Amelia doesn’t, the two have a blowout fight like they’ve never experienced. And before Amelia has a chance to mend things, Jenna is killed in a freak car accident. Grief-stricken, and without her best friend to guide her, Amelia questions everything she had planned for the future.
When a mysterious, rare edition of the Orman Chronicles arrives, Amelia is convinced that it somehow came from Jenna. Tracking the book to an obscure but enchanting bookstore in Michigan, Amelia is shocked to find herself face-to-face with the enigmatic and handsome N. E. Endsley himself, the reason for Amelia’s and Jenna’s fight and perhaps the clue to what Jenna wanted to tell her all along.
Ashley Schumacher’s devastating and beautiful debut, Amelia Unabridged, is about finding hope and strength within yourself, and maybe, just maybe, falling in love while you do it.
