I'll Meet You There Review

I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

Title: I’ll Meet You There

Author: Heather Demetrios

Series: None

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co.

Publication Date: February 3, 2015

Genre: Fiction; Realistic Fiction; Contemporary; Romance; Young Adult

Pages: 388

Format: Hardcover

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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.

On some level, I always knew this book was going to be good. My book compass is rarely this right. To my delight, I’ll Meet You There started out good and kept getting better from there.

Skylar Evans is trapped in her rusty nowhere town of Creek View. If she followed the unspoken rules of all other Creek View residents, she’d stay there for the rest of her life, living pay check-to-paycheck on a GED education or less. She’d marry a good-for-nothing furniture occupier and be pregnant by the time she was getting her high school diploma. And she’d be happy about it. But passionately artistic Skylar sticks to her own Plan. But when art school and the escape from her dead beat town starts slipping through her outstretched fingers, she starts to think the Plan is just another dream. Then, Josh Mitchell, town legend turned Marine, returns from Afghanistan with only one leg. Skylar and Josh’s path coincidentally collide at Paradise, and years of loneliness and hopeless dreaming come together and form a relationship deeper in meaning than either of them had ever hoped they deserved.

This book is about a lot of things: overcoming socioeconomic status, the tragic aftermath of fighting in a war, loss, betrayal, hope, and love. It was a statement of the intricate traps set by a person’s external environment, and the trying attempts one has to make in order to break free of such prisons.

Skylar Evans has always been subject to the life of trailer parks and working two jobs to support a static life that becomes neither better nor worse. Success and comfortability is unforeseeable from her and her family’s impoverished position. Her mother, throughout the story, is vulnerable to bouts of depression and the draw of a man whose only attractive feature is his ability to finance her and Skylar’s lives.

Josh’s reckless reputation has kept his old self alive in his old home town of Creek View. His return after joining the Marines was unexpected yet quickly accepted. After all, a life in Creek View was like quicksand; you could try to escape and may even almost succeed for a moment, but sooner or later, you’re bound to be sucked back in again. Josh not only returns as a shell of the charismatic and rash boy he once was but also as a wounded veteran with the bags upon bags of suppressed learned instincts and emotions.

What’s so different about this book compared to all the other tributes to our veterans is Demetrios’ unapologetic take on the wounded veteran. Held in such high esteem, it’s not uncommon for authors to tip-toe around their characters, afraid to break their perfect warrior specimen, to flaw them in places they should be polished. Demetrios, exposed to the life of veterans and soldiers her entire life, was fearless yet respectful with her imperfect portrayal of Josh, the image of a war vet riddled with guilt, regret, fear, and post-traumatic stress. Not only was she brutally honest with the way she built Josh so ragged and bruised, but also with the means in which she formed the harsh realities of loving someone such as Josh.

Neither Josh nor Skylar can be considered unique or original. As mere representations of the millions of people living in their positions, their main purpose is to instill a special kind of compassion and respect for those they embody. Demetrios’ mastery in storytelling was hypnotic and hard to look away from, as was all the elements in her story. From the characters to the setting to the heartbreak, this novel was breathtakingly real.

Top Ten Tuesday: Celebrating Diversity

Top Ten Tuesday is a fantastic meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This is my first time participating, and I am really excited about it. 

Prompt: Ten Books That Celebrate Diversity/Diverse Characters

Books (and life) without diversity would be so boring. Diversity makes things fun and exciting and weird (in a good way), and when you're exposed to different things and characters and stories, you learn so much more about perspective and compassion. My favorite books to read are the ones told from the point of view of someone that's different than everyone else around them. Whether it be LGBTQ, mental illness, physical deformities, etc, etc, I love learning about it. It expands my view of the world around me, and I learn that my life is so small compared to thousands and thousands others out there with their own problems and their own lives. These books taught me things I never would've known about before and have helped me celebrate diversity.



1. Shabanu (Shabanu #1) by Suzanna Fisher Staples: I read this book about four years ago, but I still think about it. Told in the setting of Pakistan, Shabanu taught me about the Muslim culture, and what it would be like to grow up in world where I would have very little of the rights I have today.

Life is both sweet and cruel to strong-willed young Shabanu, whose home is the windswept Cholistan Desert of Pakistan. The second daughter in a family with no sons, she' s been allowed freedoms forbidden to most Muslim girls. But when a tragic encounter with a wealthy and powerful landowner ruins the marriage plans of her older sister, Shabanu is called upon to sacrifice everything she' s dreamed of. Should she do what is necessary to uphold her family' s honor-- or listen to the stirrings of her own heart?

2. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz: This was my first LGBT book, and I didn't even know it until about half-way through. I was surprised, but not in a bad way. It's sweet and hopeful, and the writing is beautiful. 

3. Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern: What book would be more perfect for Celebrating Diversity than a love story between a boy with crippling OCD and a girl with cerebral palsy? Unique in it's own right, this book will teach you the difficulties of living with both mental and physical disabilities.


4. I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson: Three words: 2015 Printz Winner. This book is so great, so pure, and so meaningful. I would recommend it to anyone.

Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world.

This radiant novel from the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.My Review

5. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson: A memoir written in verse, this thoughtful novel tells the personal story of growing up in the middle of the Civil Rights movement. Culture and acceptance play a major role in Woodson's intimate history.

Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.

6. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie: A novel filled with growing pains and finding out who you are, The Absolute True Diary tells a story of both embracing and escaping your roots. It's told from the point of view of tender, innocent adolescence and can teach everyone a thing or two about growing up in one community and striving to succeed in another.

Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.

With a forward by Markus Zusak, interviews with Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney, and four-color interior art throughout, this edition is perfect for fans and collectors alike.

7. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon: This book blew my mind. More than once. I've never read anything like it. The point of view is from a boy with autism, one of the most misunderstood mental disabilities. To be inside a mind as complex as this one was incredible.



8. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven: Many have noticed the growing popularity of books about suicide and depression in the YA book world, and All the Bright Places was one of the first. I loved it, and I am so glad I got the opportunity to read it. Influenced by the author's own memories, I consider this story as one of the most brave and unapologetic I have ever read.



9. Caminar by Skila Brown: Few books in the middle grade and young adult levels ever talk about the events of the Guatemalan civil war, and even fewer do it with verse. This one is one of the very few.



10. Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky: One of the reason why I think so many people love this book is because everyone, on one level or another, is a wallflower. They relate to Charlie's unique voice, and therefore, relate to Chbosky's writing on a very deep level. This book deals with a myriad of characters with different backgrounds and personalities, which is why I feel is deserves a spot of a list meant to celebrate diversity.



Which books do you think celebrate diversity?