Title: Through To You
Author: Lauren Barnholdt
Series: Standalone
Genre: YA Contemporary
Format: Hardcover, 288 pages
Release Date: July 8th 2014
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Source: ARC received from publisher in exchange for an honest review

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Opposites attract—and then complicate—in this romantic, relatable novel from the author of Two-Way Street and Sometimes It Happens.

It starts with a scribbled note in class: I like your sparkle. Harper had casually threaded a piece of blue and silver tinsel through her ponytail in honor of school spirit day. And that carefree, corny gesture is what grabs Penn Mattingly’s eye. Penn—resident heartbreaker of the senior class. Reliably unreliable. Trouble with a capital “T.” And okay, smolderingly sexy.

Harper’s surprised by Penn’s attention—and so is Penn. The last thing he needs is a girlfriend. Or even a friend-with-benefits. The note is not supposed to lead to anything.

Oh, but it does. They hang out. They have fun. They talk. They make out. And after a while, it seems like they just click. But Penn and Harper have very different ideas about what relationships look like, in no small part because of their very different family backgrounds. Of course they could talk about these differences—if Penn knew how to talk about feelings.

Harper and Penn understand their attraction is illogical, yet something keeps pulling them together. It’s like a crazy roller coaster—exhilarating, terrifying, and amazing all at once. And neither knows how to stop the ride…


I love contemporary, in the last few months I have read a lot from that genre and i have to say it has become a new love for me. I just love the fact that the characters are more on display than any other genre, and characters are what I loved most in novels anyways.  So when I saw the synopsis for Through to You I knew i had to read it, because it was a contemporary.

Through to You was a very easy read. I would recommend it for anyone going to the beach or needs a read for a road trip. I think I read it in one sitting so it was a very fast read for me. My favourite [art of this book were the secondary characters, I loved all of them because I felt like they were the comedic relief to the story. Best friends to narrators are always my fav to read because you really get a sense of who the main character is through another character. And I really liked that part of the book.

Unfortunately I did not connect with the main character as much as I would have liked. I just could not connect with her the way I would have liked, she was very young for her age, and her reasoning for being so upset at the beginning of the book, i kept reading to figure what the big reveal was going to be and to be honest when it was lackluster at best. I did not relate to our main characters reaction at all, I thought she was overreacting a bit and it was not as bad as she was presenting it. The way Harper was talking about it, I felt like it was this big betrayal of epic proportions and it fell flat for me.

The main point of this book was the love story between Harper and the bad boy at her school. I was rooting for them in the beginning because I saw the build up and I thought it was would get interesting the more i read, but sadly that fell flat for me as well. I just did not feel the chemistry between these two characters, and honestly the way Harper was talking it seemed like they were so in love and were together for such a long time, but in reality I felt like they were more casual than anything.

Overall I liked reading Through to You. It was a fast and easy read but ultimately it fell short for me in characterization and the love story.