Just Another...Book Crush (#14): What I Thought Was True by Huntley Fitzpatrick

Just Another...Book Crush! is a monthly feature where I invite an author whose book I've recently reviewed and loved to write a guest post and share their three latest book crushes. It's a feature I'm starting mostly because I'm often very shy to approach authors, especially ones I admire, and also because I love reading guest posts since, more often than not, they convince me to pick up a book even when the reviewer cannot. 

Reader, I've been dying to share this post with you since I first read it in February, believe it or not. Huntley Fitzpatrick's sophomore novel, What I Thought Was True, remains my absolute favorite contemporary read of the year and I couldn't resist the urge to invite her on the blog after it nestled its way into my heart. I only hope you all love her novel - and this post! - as much as I do.

Gwen Castle's Biggest Mistake Ever, Cassidy Somers, is slumming it as a yard boy on her Nantucket-esque island this summer. He's a rich kid from across the bridge in Stony Bay, and she hails from a family of fishermen and housecleaners who keep the island's summer people happy. Gwen worries a life of cleaning houses will be her fate too, but just when it looks like she'll never escape her past—or the island—Gwen's dad gives her some shocking advice. Sparks fly and secret histories unspool as Gwen spends a gorgeous, restless summer struggling to resolve what she thought was true—about the place she lives, the people she loves, and even herself—with what really is.

As a teenager, I felt like all I did was make mistakes. I fell in love too hard, too easily and way too permanently. I talked (babbled) at the wrong times and was completely lost for words at other crucial times. I could not for the life of me love the guy who gave me his heart but handed over mine without question to the one who couldn’t. And I looked all around in books to find someone like me. 

There are a lot of heroines out there whom everyone seems to love. Rose in the Eight Cousins book was the first one I encountered. Louisa May Alcott’s heroine had seven boy cousins and they ALL loved her. Bella Swan is another—she moves into Forks and the entire male population of the high school succumbs to her charms. 

I just always liked the rougher, tougher, less charming girls. Jo, from Little Women. Laura Ingalls, from the Little House books, with her stubbornness and her anger, her honest jealousy. Scarlett O’Hara, no one’s good girl. Janie Crawford from Their Eyes were watching God, t ough and true enough to do all she could to save her own life. Meg, from A Wrinkle in Time, whose faults turned out to be her salvation. None of them waited around to be saved. When the hero fell for them, it felt earned…real, in a way the perfect boy falling for the perfect girl never can.

So, that’s where Gwen Castle, from WHAT I THOUGHT WAS TRUE, came from. I wanted a heroine who was far from perfect, and a hero who loved exactly that about her, who recognized that about her. I wanted to write someone who made mistakes, hurtful ones, and learned from them. Who loved her imperfect family for its imperfections, the seemingly perfect boy because she saw his flaws and understood that he struggled with them, and tried to do better, and who finally could love herself, faults and all.

Just Another...Book Crush!

Aristotle and Dante Explore the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
I read the summary of this and thought,” Well okay, I’ll read it, even though I know exactly what will happen.” But nothing, NOTHING, about this book happened the way I expected. It is that rare heartfelt, real book where there’s not a single cliché. The characters love one another because they are genuinely there for one another, time after time, difficult circumstance after more trouble. They show up, turn from confused fifteen year olds to seventeen year olds who know what they want (even if it takes the very last chapter for one of them to figure it out) They don’t have distant, absent, lost parents…both are from families who love them for exactly who they are. The lost brother doesn’t get redeemed, but the distant father unexpectedly, the world disapproves but they find their way through…it’s all so perfect, in the imperfect way that is the best of books…and life. 

How To Love by Katie Cotugno
Sawyer LeGrande is a mess, and Reena Montero loves him anyway. And this could be the basis for a lot of cheesy love songs and bad books with abusive heroes and passive codependent heroines. But How to Love is nothing like that at all. It’s a brilliantly written story of two people who share an honest love, with so many issues of timing and circumstance getting in between that, how they find their way across the gulf. Told in time past, and time present, this book will make you ache and cry and laugh and rage. Intelligent but lost hero, smart but derailed heroine. The way they find one another. So so good. 

Like No Other by Una LaMarche.
“Romeo and Juliet” –like story gets tossed around a lot. And I majored in English Lit and Shakespeare, so I don’t toss this around lightly. But this is the real deal. Bittersweet, original, incredible. About a pair of teenagers from completely, diametrically opposed backgrounds, backgrounds they genuinely believe in, who fall into an improbable but genuine love. This book is ‘bittersweet’ in every good way. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and about the good hearts and thoughtful minds of the hero and heroine.

I absolutely loved Gwen, precisely because of her flaws. Thanks for sharing, Huntley, and I'm off to add these recs to my TBR at once! (Aristotle and Dante is a favorite of mine, so if you haven't already read it, READ IT!)

P.S. -- You can read my gushing review of What I Thought Was True HERE in case you missed it last month!