The Geography Of You And Me By Jennifer E.Smith - A Review By Laura

Synopsis

Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they’re rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father.

Lucy and Owen’s relationship plays out across the globe as they stay in touch through postcards, occasional e-mails, and—finally—a reunion in the city where they first met.

A carefully charted map of a long-distance relationship, Jennifer E. Smith’s new novel shows that the center of the world isn't necessarily a place. It can be a person, too.

 I gave this book 5 out of 5 and it would have been more if it could... This book restored my faith in my love of books after my terrible experience with Feed, the first book I ever failed not to finish. The only thing I would say was at fault with this book is that there was not enough of it and I didn't want it to end. There is just so much to love about it...

You get to travel the world reading just this one book

Reading this book has actually made me feel the need to write a blog post on why I want to visit Paris so much, i'm sure you will all get that post at some point this week.
The book is set from both Owens and Lucys point of view, which allows us to be in two different places at the same time. When reading Lucys travels in particular you see the beauty of a number of different place... She also makes me want to find a book set in each city I may visit in the future and read it while I am there. I am also going to start picking postcards up from every place I travel thanks to Jennifer E Smith.

The characters are loveable and relatable

 In most of the books I have read I find that I dislike certain characters even though in some cases i'm not supposed to, however in this book I haven't found any character I don't like... if it wasn't genius enough to create two characters lives to follow who you just fall in love with, Jennifer E Smith just had to make you love everyone else in the book too... From their parents to the doormen in the Lobby of Where Lucy and Owen first met to the old man in the lift in London although he is just a character in passing. We follow Owens Journey through life as he deals with the death of his mother and although this could make him a nasty piece of work it makes him the opposite... He is caring and loving, funny and thoughtful I cannot fault him at all. Then we have Lucy who also has these qualities although she has a completely different personality and loves her traveling and her books, although she still has both her parents she too feels as though she is alone which is all resolved at the end of the book. I could read a book solely on one of these characters alone but together they are even more perfect.

There are so many quotes I love in this book

“If you were to draw a map of the two of them, of where they started out and where they would both end up, the lines would be shooting away from each other like magnets spun around on their poles. And it occurred to Owen that there was something deeply flawed about this, that there should be circles or angels or turns, anything that might make it possible for the two lines to meet again. Instead, they were both headed in the exact opposite directions. The map was as good as a door swinging shut. And the geography of the thing- the geography of them- was completely and hopelessly wrong.”"He was like one of her novels, still unfinished and best understood in the right place and at the right time. She couldn't wait to read the rest.”

“But there’s no such thing as a completely fresh start. Everything new arrives on the heels of something old, and every beginning comes at the cost of an ending.”

I can't quote anymore of my favourite quotes in this book because there are really just too many... i'd end up more or less writing the whole book just in this post... But from the three above you can clearly get the idea of just how good Jennifer E Smith is with words...

Overall I would highly recommend that you go buy this book right now! I loved it so much I couldn't put it down... I actually spent over an hour in a freezing cold bath last night just because I couldn't put the last half of the book down long enough to get out. I also find myself wanting to reread this book although I don't reread... If that isn't saying something I don't know what is.