"This is a fantastic book from Elizabeth Scott that new and old fans will enjoy. It's full of emotion, surprise, and honesty — what more can you ask for?" — Miss Remmers
Release Date: May 2011
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge and 2011 eBook Challenge
"Abby accepted that she can't measure up to her beautiful, magnetic sister Tess a long time ago, and knows exactly what she is: Second best. Invisible.
Until the accident.
Now Tess is in a coma, and Abby's life is on hold. It may have been hard living with Tess, but it's nothing compared to living without her.
She's got a plan to bring Tess back though, involving the gorgeous and mysterious Eli, but then Abby learns something about Tess, something that was always there, but that she'd never seen.
Abby is about to find out that truth isn't always what you think it is, and that life holds more than she ever thought it could... "
As my first Elizabeth Scott novel, I didn't quite know what to expect with "Between Here and Forever." I figured it would be very similar to Lurlene McDaniel (from my middle school years) where the dying sister leaves the younger sister all on her own to deal with her devastation and grief before meeting a young man who is also hurting in one way or another. The two (inevitably) develop a wonderful friendship and become either best friends or lovers so that when the sister dies the younger sister isn't all alone.
You get the idea.
"Between Here and Forever" starts out with that general plot line so much so that I almost put it down. But somewhere between pages 50 and 200 something exciting happened and I don't really know what it was. This book went from a book where I was looking at the pages thinking "Oh my, I have a lot left to read" to me looking down and realizing the book was almost finished! I can't exactly say what transformed this book because I have yet to figure it out myself. But I will admit that this book is full of so much more depth and raw emotion than I had assumed or expected.
I will say that Abby's "I suck" attitude did wear on me throughout the novel. At first it made me sad to see her take compliments and misconstrue them to be negative, but this behavior continued to get worse and I continued to get more annoyed. But by the end of the novel I understood why this was necessary; I also understand that this trait made Abby probably more of a realistic and honest character than she would have been without.
There were a few "twists" throughout this novel that I very much enjoyed and didn't see coming. Really. On the plane to BEA (that's how late this post is) there was a moment where I couldn't help but exclaim, "Really! Wow!" and Sheila (Book Journey) may have rolled her eyes at me.:)
This is a fantastic book from Elizabeth Scott that new and old fans will enjoy. It's full of emotion, surprise, and honesty — what more can you ask for?
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To the FTC, with love: Review Galley