I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

I'll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios
(Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads)Published by Macmillan on February 3rd 2015
Genres: Adolescence, Family, Love & Romance, Parents, Social Issues, Young Adult
Pages: 400
Format: eARC

If seventeen-year-old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straightedge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom--that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she's ever worked for is on the line.Nineteen-year-old Josh Mitchell had a different ticket out of Creek View: the Marines. But after his leg is blown off in Afghanistan, he returns home, a shell of the cocksure boy he used to be. What brings Skylar and Josh together is working at the Paradise--a quirky motel off California's dusty Highway 99. Despite their differences, their shared isolation turns into an unexpected friendship and soon, something deeper.

We have the amazing honor of having Heather on the blog today! Everything she does is magic… not even an exaggeration there, and her words below are included in that statement! Go, read them and try not to be hit in the feels. I was!

Life Rafts and Safety Nets: On The Friends That Keep Us

Though I’ll Meet You There is first and foremost a love story, the relationships that Skylar, the protagonist, has with her two best friends, Dylan and Chris, is an essential part of Sky’s journey. When we meet her, we see that Sky’s father has been dead for several years and that her mother’s alcoholism and depression have forced Sky to take on a very adult role in her home. In many ways, she is the parent and her mother the wayward teenager. Her friends provide a necessary balance between work and play in her life. The only time Sky has a chance to be a teen is when she’s with her best friends—and even then, the trio is often dealing with adult concerns. Dylan is a teen mom and it was only through Sky and Chris’s help that she was able to graduate on time. All three come from the same socio-economic class and their poverty is part of their bond. My best friend in high school was as poor as I was and I can’t even begin to describe what a comfort that was, to be known and to have someone you didn’t have to pretend with.

The summer over which the novel takes place is a time of transition for all three of them, as they have just graduated from high school. Skylar and Chris are equally ambitious and have received scholarships to study at good schools. Dylan is just grateful she graduated—her plans are limited to taking care of her son and continuing as a waitress at the local diner, with perhaps a few community college classes thrown in. Though they’re different, the three have forged a bond through shared struggles and years of memories. They have each other’s backs and aren’t afraid to say the hard thing when it needs to be heard. They’re fiercely loyal and protective of one another, which is perhaps why they’re able to avoid the apathy that plagues the youth of Creek View. As the events of the summer unfold, their friendship is challenged. Change is coming and though they’re eager for it, the changes also mean leaving one another. Chris plans to go to Boston, Sky to San Francisco, while Dylan will stay in Creek View. Their summer is bittersweet, tinged with the shadow of goodbye.

This novel is my most autobiographical. Sky is a girl who’s desperate to get out of her small town, a place she’s never fit in, and study art in a beautiful, cosmopolitan city. So was I. She knows if she stays in Creek View, it’ll kill her. So did I. She credits her friends with the opportunities she now has to get out, whether it’s creating a pact with Chris or keeping her spirits up with fun-loving Dylan. I, too, had a couple of best friends in high school who kept me going, who affirmed my identity and my dreams. Life at home was hard for me and my best friends were there in my darkest hours, when I seriously wondered if I wanted to keep living or not. They had their dark times too and I was there when they needed me, coaxing them back into the light. Between phone calls and passed notes and late night fast food, the three of us held onto one another for dear life.

A few days after I graduated from high school, I moved out of the house. My step-father was, I’m sure, overjoyed. My mother, sad but unsurprised. I felt bad about ditching my sister, who was three years younger, and my little brothers, but I had to get out. Things were bad there—not child protective services bad, but bad in soul killing ways. My kindred spirit and best friend, Sarah, let me come live with her. Sarah’s mom was a saint for allowing two teen girls to stay in the house by themselves (she was a nurse at a summer camp). Living with Sarah gave me the courage to break up with my emotionally abusive older boyfriend, the courage to face the unknown while slightly untethered. Within a matter of weeks, our other best friend, Missy, came to live in the house, too. We were three girls, giddy with freedom, loving these precious moments together because we knew we’d all be apart come September. It was the best summer of my life. I’d never felt so protected, so loved, so happy. We made disastrous dinners and danced in the living room and slept in sleeping bags. Sarah would wake me up every morning—no easy task—with a glass of Pepsi and a Broadway song. That house was a life raft and it carried me to the shore of adulthood, safe and sound.

There’s a scene in I’ll Meet You There where Sky, Chris, and Dylan are on a trampoline. We had one of those, too. In the evenings, after a long hot central California day, my trio and I would go lay out on it and sort out the problems of the universe. I’ll leave you with this scene, the best way I can sum up the power of friendship and how it can be one of the great love affairs of your life:

Chris laughed and spun in the air as he lifted himself higher and higher. Our bodies jolted off the trampoline’s thick net, and I gasped, spreading my arms wide, like Chris could catapult me into the sky. I closed my eyes, for once loving the sweet terror of not knowing where I would land. Floating in the air, crashing back down, Dylan beside me, the net always under me. I gave myself up to the free fall. No rules or boundaries or barriers. The three of us let go and flew.

Jaime’s Thoughts

You all know how hard it is to write a meaningful review for a book that you absolutely loved right? Well, that’s the boat I find myself in with this one.

I was late to the Heather Demetrios party with Something Real … and I was positive after reading it that I would never be late to her amazing words again, and when I had the opportunity to grab this one I did so immediately and I’m pretty sure this is going to be among my top reads of the year if not on my all-time favorites list!

Skylar Evans lives in the dead end of town, and she’s counting down the days until she can get out. All she has to do is graduate and make sure her mom has her act together. That last part isn’t going to be so easy and it’s further complicated when her mom loses her job and starts hanging with someone she doesn’t trust.

Josh Mitchell thought he had his ticket out of Creek View… The Marines. But when he loses a leg in Afghanistan and he’s forced to return home, his life is certainly nothing like the one he had when he left. He absolutely doesn’t expect to connect with Skylar… but they find friendship in each other and eventually something even more.

“Sky,” he whispered. My name in his mouth sounded like a warning, but he wasn’t letting go, was gripping me harder, and after all these weeks of anxious hope, it was suddenly so easy to just turn my body a few degrees and press my lips against his.

UGH you guys…. These characters that Demetrios has crafted are amazing. They are so layered and complex and relatable and they make you feel things you don’t want to feel and despite the heavy feel of this story, I couldn’t help but feel so filled with hope when I turned the last page.

This story has a lot of ups and downs… the struggles that Josh faces every single day, the things he used to take for granted and his despondency about where his life can go from here was hard to read. But it was also amazing to see him push himself, to not want to give up, to realize that there is more out there for him. And Skylar and Josh together were just perfection. Don’t get that statement wrong. Their friendship is by no means easy… and there was this one time that my heart split in two, but everything that happened felt real and raw and sad… yet beautiful.

There was one quote in this book that I highlighted because it was lovely and I didn’t really realize the significance of it until rereading my notes…

“I loved taking these pieces and making them part of a whole, giving them a place to belong. More beautiful than when they started.”

This couldn’t have summed up this story for me any better. Demetrios has taken these characters… the pieces of the story and made them whole, she’s given them a place to belong and it’s true … while they started out beautifully, they are even better when you get to that last page.

If you’re looking for a poignant, touching story of fresh starts and new beginnings a story of finding the people you can call family, even if they aren’t exactly your original family. If you are looking for an unexpected romance and characters who will grab hold of you and have you thinking about them even after you’ve closed the book then this is definitely for you.

Thank you so very much to MacMillan for the advance copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.

About Heather Demetrios

When she’s not traipsing around the world or spending time in imaginary places, Heather Demetrios lives with her husband in New York City. Originally from Los Angeles, she now calls the East Coast home. Heather has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a recipient of the PEN New England Susan P. Bloom Discovery Award for her debut novel, Something Real. Her other novels include Exquisite Captive, the first in the Dark Caravan Cycle fantasy series, and I’ll Meet You There. She is the founder of Live Your What, an organization dedicated to fostering passion in people of all ages and creating writing opportunities for underserved youth.

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