After the death of her stepfather, Michaela Reilly’s family picks up and moves from the bustling city of Miami to a tiny speck of a town in the middle of nowhere Georgia. Starting over is always hard, but when you’re stuck with an emotionally wrecked mother who won’t even look at you and the responsibility of practically raising your younger brother and sister, it’s even more difficult. Life in a small, rural town is a lot different from what she’s used to. Beaches are replaced with lazy, shaded rivers. Six lane highways with dirt roads. And Levi, the cute preacher’s son, with intentions as pure as his smile, takes the place of a string of shallow, meaningless hookups back home. Some things remain the same no matter where you go, however. Like the way a cute boy can make things seem not so bad, or how when you fall in love You. Just. Know. It's too bad it’s not only the good things that are universal. Bad things can follow you, no matter how far away from them you run. Secrets always end up hurting people. A troubled past will come back to haunt you. Michaela has both.
In many ways, Perdition is a book about learning how to be yourself and how to find your way in the world. It's also about first love and learning how to trust.
There are many things that are admirable about this novel. Michaela is a character many could relate to; her struggles feel real and hard. She's gone through a lot of loss, and is finding it hard to fit in. In an understandable rebel fashion, she also bucks up against trying to fit in. Michaela's journey is one worth telling, and Levi is a sweet, trusting, and patient love interest.
This is definitely a sappy love story, and I think readers will fall in love with their relationship as quickly as the characters do. Michaela and Levi hit it off immediately and Levi is great because he likes Michaela just as she is.
In the end, I enjoyed Perdition more than What's a Soulmate, the young adult fantasy novel by Ouimet that I read last fall, but I wasn't crazy about this book, either. There were some plot points that were hard to overlook. I had a hard time believing the relationship between Michaela and her mother. Many of Michaela's peers felt like one-dimensional mean girls. I was also disappointed with the last quarter or so of the book and the ending was unsatisfying.
Should you read it? Perdition by Lindsey Ouimet is a sweet, angsty, contemporary YA romance. Levi is a romantic and understanding leading man and there are also some great side characters who help the story along. It isn't an incredible example of the genre, but lovers of the genre will probably like this one, too!
*I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review*
3 Stars
Published by Evernight Teen on March 31, 2017