Heidi Hart

I had heard good things about this series, but approached it warily because high school romance is not generally my speed anymore. I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy this as much as I did, since it's much more angsty than I usually like. The two main characters have backgrounds so tragic it was a bit of a trial to willingly suspend my disbelief. Yes, maybe such a series of extremely unfortunate events could happen to one person, but two? And I'm to believe that these two so completely damaged people would be a good match for each other, rather than being too broken to help themselves, much less each other? 

Still, for purposes of a good story, I went with it. I ended up liking Noah and Echo very much, and I liked the way the story revealed the layers of their tragic histories gradually, without info dumping or excessive navel-gazing. I liked that both characters had their own individual character arcs, independent of their evolution into a couple. I liked that supporting characters were well-developed and had important roles in the story, and were not just there to give the main characters someone to talk to when their significant other wasn't around. -And the romance was very satisfying, though much angstier than I generally prefer. 

Because this book is about and for high school readers, the main characters don't have sex, though there is discussion of it and progress toward that end goal.