Unlit Star by Lindy Zart

Synopsis:
We are not guaranteed anything, not even this life.

Rivers Young is the popular guy untouchable by reality. He is like a star—bright, consuming, otherworldly. The thing about stars, though, is that they eventually fall, and he is no different.

He falls far and he falls hard.

Delilah Bana is the outcast enshrouded in all of life’s ironies. Alone, in the dark, like dusk as it falls on the world. When Rivers hits the ground, she is the night that catches him. In the darkness, they meld into something beautiful that shines like the sun.

Only, the greater the star is, the shorter its lifespan.

    

My Review:
3.5 stars — This one had so many moments of 5 star-ness.  I actually highlighted quite a few passages (though not the ones that everyone else apparently did).  But I think in the end this was just one of those stylistic mismatches for me.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve never been attracted to complicated writing.  I know it’s what tends to get awards and accolades, but I guess I’m just a simple girl.  And this book just didn’t quite work for me in that way.  It also had a lot of…almost…philosophizing?  And I don’t mind some of that, but it was just a very introspective book in parts and I ended up losing interest in those parts.  And so strangely I would be going along enjoying myself and the good parts (which I will totally get to), and then Delilah would get going (either in her head, or talking to Rivers), and I would lose some of the emotions.  In the end I didn’t even really cry, which totally surprised me.  I teared up, but I guess I was expecting full on bawling when I figured out one of the major plot points would add some tragedy to the story.

I will also admit that this book reminded me a lot of one of my favourite movies of all time (though I’ve never read the book), and so it suffered from unintentional comparison on my part, and while I enjoyed some parts of this book better, in the end it couldn’t compete in my heart.

OK, now that that crap is out of the way, on to what I liked (and in some cases adored).  Delilah could be an absolute trip.  There were some aspects of her personality that bothered me, but in general I thoroughly enjoyed her spunkiness and her newfound positive attitude.  I loved the first part of the book sooooo much, and how she got through to Rivers by not treating him with kid gloves.  I loved watching their relationship develop, and I could totally feel the connection between them.

And Rivers was generally delightful too.  I felt so many of his emotions, and all the struggles he went through with overcoming his accident…I was just all in with him.  Occasionally his love lines to Delilah got to be a bit flowery, but I could overlook them most of the time.  And again, I cannot stress enough how his emotions got to me and felt so real.

And the highlight for me in this story was the teasing way that Delilah and Rivers interacted.  I seriously laughed so much at times.  Honestly, so many great moments that made my heart just happy for the two of them together.

So basically it was another up and down book for me.  I’ll probably round up b/c I just loved the good parts so much, but it’s a hard decision because I was disappointed that it wasn’t the epic read I was hoping for.