The Geography of You and Me

Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they're rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father.

Lucy and Owen's relationship plays out across the globe as they stay in touch through postcards, occasional e-mails, and -- finally -- a reunion in the city where they first met.

A carefully charted map of a long-distance relationship, Jennifer E. Smith's new novel shows that the center of the world isn't necessarily a place. It can be a person, too.

My opinion: I was really excited when I received this book for review. I had seen that a lot of other book bloggers had enjoyed the book and loved the cover so couldn't wait to get stuck in over the bank holiday weekend.

Lucy and Owen are two teenagers who get stuck in a lift together in the apartment building where they both live in New York. Lucy lives with her parents who are away on yet another trip, and her brothers who have both gone off to university. Owen and his dad have recently moved to New York after his dad was offered the job of caretaker for the building following the sudden death of Owen's mother. One shared evening and experience links Lucy and Owen together over the coming months, and despite both moving a number of times, they keep in touch with postcards.

This book is lovely and cute, with a real feel of old school innocence. I think this is highlighted by the way that Owen and Lucy mainly stay in contact by sending each other postcards, choosing, in the most part, to shun the more techy methods of contact favoured by teenagers these days. This book is a quick read and is well paced, and even though it's not the most action packed story I have ever read, it still made me want to read more.

A very cute and wonderfully old fashioned love story, I'd recommend this for fans of YA and those who usually read romance and would like to give YA a go.

My rating: Four stars

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher in return for an honest review.