ARC REVIEW – EMMY & OLIVER by Robin Benway

Emmy & Oliver
by Robin Benway
Publisher – HarperTeen/Simon & Schuster UK
Release Date – June 23rd/July 16th 2015
Buy – Amazon | Book Depository

Emmy’s best friend, Oliver, reappears after being kidnapped by his father ten years ago. Emmy hopes to pick up their relationship right where it left off. Are they destined to be together? Or has fate irreparably driven them apart?

Emmy just wants to be in charge of her own life.

She wants to stay out late, surf her favorite beach—go anywhere without her parents’ relentless worrying. But Emmy’s parents can’t seem to let her grow up—not since the day Oliver disappeared.

Oliver needs a moment to figure out his heart.

He’d thought, all these years, that his dad was the good guy. He never knew that it was his father who kidnapped him and kept him on the run. Discovering it, and finding himself returned to his old hometown, all at once, has his heart racing and his thoughts swirling.

Emmy and Oliver were going to be best friends forever, or maybe even more, before their futures were ripped apart. In Emmy’s soul, despite the space and time between them, their connection has never been severed. But is their story still written in the stars? Or are their hearts like the pieces of two different puzzles—impossible to fit together?

                                                         

Emmy & Oliver is another aspect of contemporary. Granted I’ve read a few contemporaries in one go at the moment but I loved that it stood out from the rest. It took a completely new angle on how a friendship can really last forever and be the most precious thing in your life when your feelings for each other certainly don’t finish at ‘just friends’…

One day Oliver and Emmy where only 10 when Oliver moved with his dad. He knew nothing out of the ordinary when her first left, but as time went on and they constantly moved around and hid under the radar that actually he was taken by his father. Emmy has hoped that he would come back one day and just continue where they left off, constant searches and news crews surrounded her life for years. Now 10 years later he was found…

“Do you like Emmy? Yes or No”

The day that Olly went missing was the day that Emmy thought that they would be best friends forever, but when one of her best friends, Caro asked Oliver, did he like Emmy more than a friend? He was only 10 at the time but still after all this time, she still wants to know if that is true even to this day. Emmy was a helpless character when we first met her. She didn’t really move on when Olly suddenly disappeared but she really want given the chance either. Her parents didn’t help matter. They kept her in a small cardboard box and she hasn’t been let out to breathe. She has to lie to her parents about her surfing, the one thing she really lets her down with. It’s the only time she can really lose herself in the waves and motion. To get a perspective of her life. This is how she and Oliver really start to rekindle the friendship they once had.

For a while, neither of them really know what to say or do. It’s a little awkward, it’s as if they didn’t know how to act around each after so long. Though the first thing both of their parents to them was “Oliver needed space…” how much space does the poor lad need when he probably doesn’t even know what he wants himself. But both parents really didn’t know what they where saying. They were to stuck in the 10 years that had passed to see their children were suffocating. Their first meet as school starts, really was quite emotional, “Emily is it?!” I was quite taken back myself and I felt that would really put things between them in perspective. But Emmy wasn’t going to give up on the boy next door. This was a start to seeing the girl who likes to surf, surface to her full potential.

Relationships based on strong friendships are the best kind in a novel or in real life. You find that when you know some one for so long, and start to feel a pull of something deeper inside you that you know they’re the one. Olly and Em are the reason why I love immersing myself in that sort of romance once more. The book itself is split into four parts, each with a flashback or memory of their childhood friendship then back to present where they both remember it and both building that connection once again. What I felt it lacked was Oliver’s POV. After all it was his disappearance that sparks their re-connection and I think a dual perspective would’ve really created a more solid picture of Olly’s character and the novel as a whole. We would be able to understand him more and see more emotional connection towards him as a reader.

For the lovers and readers of Kasie West (On the Fence and The Fill-In Boyfriend), Stephanie Perkins (Lola and the Boy Next Door) then this book is for you. I would totally recommend it as an enjoyable, heartfelt and simple telling of a friendship worth saving and rekindling into something much more. Whilst this is my debut novel from this author, I’ll look forward to reading much more of her work.

Rating – 4