Book Review: Every Other Weekend

Author: Abigail Johnson 

Published: 07 January 2020

Genres: Young Adult Fiction, Domestic Fiction, Romance Novel

Can life begin again...every other weekend? 

Adam Moynihan’s life use to be awesome. Straight As, close friends and a home life so perfect that it could have been a TV show straight out of the 50’s. Then his older brother died. Now his fun-loving mom cries constantly, he and his remaining brother can’t talk without fighting, and the father that he always admired proved himself a coward by moving out when they needed him most. 

Jolene Timber’s life is nothing like the movies she loves - not the happy ones anyway. As an aspiring director, she should know, because she’s been reimagining her life as a film ever since she was a kid. With her divorced parents at each other’s throats and using her as a pawn, no amount of mental reediting will give her the love she’s starving for. 

What a powerful story of love that kindles between two hopeless teens in the world. The teens (Adam and Jolene) comes from different broken backgrounds, they connect with each other through friendship, pain, love and healing every other weekend. 

Forced to spend every other weekend in the same apartment building, the boy who thinks forgiveness makes him weak and the girl who thinks love is for fools begin an unlikely friendship. The weekends he and she endured soon becomes the best part of their lives. But when one’s life begins to mend while the other’s spiral out of control, they realize that falling in love while surrounded by its demise means nothing is ever guaranteed.

It wasn’t really a romantic novel exactly but more of a slow burning love story between two broken teens. It is a story of friendship with all the possibilities laid to a love relationship. With all the heartaches that surrounds us in this messed up world, we always need to remember that, “what if your safe place...is a person?” 

It’s a highly intelligent, heart aching relevant, stunning book that is a must read!