Fifteen-year-old Mack is a hopeless romantic–likely a hazard of growing up on film sets thanks to his father’s job. Mack has had a crush on Karim for as long as he can remember and he can’t believe it when gorgeous, popular Karim seems into him too.
But when Mack’s father takes on a new directing project in Scotland, Mack has to move away, and soon discovers how painful long-distance relationships can be. It’s awful to be so far away from Karim, and it’s made worse by the fact that Karim can be so hard to read.
Then Mack meets actor Finlay on set, and the world turns upside down again. Fin seems fearless–and his confidence could just be infectious.
Well this book was absolutely beautifully written! I’ve never read anything by this author before but I had heard great things about Black Flamingo and had actually gone to the library to pick up a copy of that. Unfortunately they didn’t have it but I found this one instead.
This was a tale of young love told through verse. I’ve read a few verse novels and i really enjoy this format.
There were a lot of characters in this book and I did find myself getting a wee bit confused or lost at times. The characters grew so much in this book that I found myself really changing the way that I felt about the main characters. I started liking Mack and feeling suspicious towards Karim (who was referred to as ‘K’ throughout the book).
Mack and K getting together was just so sweet and lovely. It was young love. However, it was so obvious that the two boys were possibly not going to have their ‘walk into the sunset’ moment. Not because of their differences in personality but due to the fact that they wanted different things from each other. Their relationship expectations were so different. Mack wanted to share their love with the world. K wanted to keep their love life private. I wasn’t out and I felt so bad for him as he felt a little bit of pressure.
When Mack moved to Scotland he formed a friendship with Fin and Fin proudly shared their friendship online and basically started to give Mack what they wanted from K.
I just didn’t want any of the characters to get hurt and I was so tense reading this book because I could see that at least one person was going to get hurt.
I felt that the way that Mack treated his friends was pretty authentic based on my own very vague memories of being 15 and having friends in love. It was pretty sad to read at times because Mack seemed to take their friends for granted which was especially sad due to the fact that they’d previously lamented their lack of friends.
I really enjoyed this book. It was beautifully written. It was a very emotional and raw read about young love and a protagonist who just struggled to know what they wanted.
Kapowski Reads 
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