Days Like This by Danielle Ellison (Website, Twitter, Goodreads)Published by Danielle Ellison, LLC on June 2nd 2015
Format: eARC
Cassie must return to the life she ran away from -- namely the boy next door whom she abandoned after accepting his proposal--once her bi-polar mother nearly burns down the house. Graham has built a new life, but when Cassie comes back into his world everything comes crumbling down except the one thing he can't escape: his feelings for her.
I picked up Days Like This by Danielle Ellison because I loved the cover and I was interested in the story based on what I read in the summary. Admittedly, I finished this one up and had some mixed feelings about it and I have a feeling it has a lot to do with the characters.
Cassie is the main character and as her story unfolds, we learn her mother is bipolar and this has translated into a rough childhood for Cassie. The one person in her life that she could always count on was Graham, the boy next door who then became her boyfriend. At nineteen, Cassie was not prepared to force a life like the one she has lived on Graham so she sneaks away to college without telling him and this creates the basis of the rest of their relationship.
I have to say, Cassie didn’t win me over. I get that she was trying to make it easy for Graham to move on and not worry about whether she might turn out like her mother or not but what she did was pretty selfish. Most people can’t just turn off their feelings and if Graham really did love her and was ready to spend the rest of his life with her, I can only imagine how heartbroken he would have been when she dumped him. And then when she came back to town and thought their friends would be ok with her and the way she had treated him, I was glad they had his back.
Graham’s mistake was that he centered his life around Cassie and until she left, he wasn’t really thinking about anything other than their life together. I thought it was a good wake up call for him and got him on a path that allowed him to think about what he wanted in life. No matter what though, living next door to Cassie’s mom always gave him moments where he would go back to thinking about Cassie and what they could have been. It was clear that despite the fact that he moved on and had another girlfriend, he hadn’t really moved on and cared about Cassie.
Overall this one was okay for me and it might just be an it’s not you, it’s me type of situation here. Ellison creates a solid story about mental health, love, and second chances, if that intrigues you consider checking it out.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the review copy.
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