Blurb:
There once was a boy, and I loved him. Logan Francis Silverstone was the complete opposite of me. I danced while he stood still. He was quiet, and I was always running my mouth. He struggled to find a smile while I refused to frown. The night I saw the darkness that truly lived inside of him, I couldn’t look away. We were broken together, yet somehow whole. We were wrong together, but always right. We were the stars that burned across the night sky, searching for a wish, praying for better tomorrows. Until the day I lost him. He threw us away with one hasty decision—a decision that changed us forever. There once was a boy, and I loved him. And for a few breaths, a few whispers, a few moments, I think he loved me, too.
I'm all about escaping into some emotional roller coaster of a novel, especially a new adult novel. I'd read the other Elements novels and enjoyed them, so I was pretty happy to give this one a try, too. This roller coaster was no fun at all.
Alyssa comes from a wealthy family and Logan lives in almost abject poverty surrounded by drugs and abuse. Despite the differences in their living situations, they still meet and form an intense and lasting friendship in their early teens. Unsurprisingly, they both have feelings for the other that they try to keep hidden. Also unsurprisingly, they can't hold back their feelings forever. It's also probably not surprising that everything that could possibly go wrong for these people does and it's just like one terrible thing after another. They also have dumb nicknames for each other. Other reviewers are super in love with the story and talk about crying to start to finish, but it just did not work for me. Sure, it certainly tugs on the heartstrings over and over. It just felt manipulative and cloying to me. (I'd like to think it's not cos I'm heartless, but who knows.)
Logan and Alyssa get stuck in an on-again-off-again relationship rut, which becomes really annoying to read. It's written in dual POV, which I don't have any problem with on principle, but both characters keep saying essentially the same thing ("I really do love him/her, I'm just pretending I don't, and it's sooo hard.") This was one that I just couldn't finish. It was just too much. I happened to accidentally read the Elements series out of order, and read this one last. If I'd read this one first, I probably wouldn't have continued.
One Star