This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Liviania. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the YA Romance category.

Here is Liviania's review:

Boys Like You has two different covers (one for the hardback, one for the paperback), and yet neither gives an accurate impression of the story inside.  This is a novel about two people who are being crushed under the weight of their own guilt finding each other and the means to forgive themselves.  The bright and colorful cover of the paperback screams “teen summer romance,” which is technically accurate while completely missing the tone of the book.  Thus, I was pretty surprised by the story I found within the covers.

Nathan Everets is a local boy, and everyone in town knows about the wreck.  He drove drunk, and now his best friend is in a coma and unlikely to ever wake up.  He meets Monroe Blackwell when he goes to her grandmother’s B&B to do court-appointed community service.  Monroe is from New York City, but she’s staying with her grandmother because her family hopes it will help her recover.  So far, the plan isn’t working, but Gram pushes the two together because she sees how two attractive teenagers look at each other and hopes it will make Monroe want to interact with people again.  She has the perfect excuse too, since Nathan can’t drive and Monroe can take him places.

The title comes from a phrase the heroine uses to describe the hero, both in her head and out loud.  In her head, she thinks about how she doesn’t want to get involved with him because he’s complicated.  Monroe is depressed and can barely get out of bed, take a shower, and eat, much less make conversation with a guy who clearly has a past (even if he is cute).  Out loud, she turns it into an insult.

“And just so you know? This isn’t a date or anything. I don’t date boys like you.”

… “A guy like me?” I settled back in my seat, indicating that she turn left.  This would be good, I thought.  “Should I be insulted?” I continued, thinking that I kinda sorta was.

“Don’t take it personally, Romeo, but you’re not my type,” she said, a hint of a rasp in her voice, as if there was something caught in her throat.  Words, maybe?

“You have a type?”

“Don’t you?” she shot back.

I shrugged but didn’t answer.

“I’ll bet your type is tall, blond, and tanned, but then, what do I know?”

… “I do have a type, and you’re not it.”

“Ouch,” she replied sarcastically, eyes on the road ahead.

“I can’t imagine with that attitude you’d be anyone’s type.”

It’s a bad first impression, but they get over it.  Nathan sees the appeal in hanging out with someone who doesn’t know what happened, who didn’t know Trevor, who he can open up to about what’s going on but at his own pace.  Monroe needs someone who has his own issues, despite what she first thinks, because he knows when to back off.  But it isn’t all about trauma.  They have fun together.  They make each other laugh and like spending time together, from parties to coffee shops to swimming holes.  There’s lots of descriptions of Monroe and Nathan’s bodies when they first meet each other and keep noticing each other; that starts to fade as they spend time together and start paying more attention to the person than the body.

While the reader knows about Nathan’s trauma from the start, the book takes longer to reveal what is haunting Monroe.  I tend not to like plots revolving around big secrets, because the truth that cannot be spoken often turns out to be not that bad. Here, I felt like I could understand why Monroe didn’t want to talk about it.  Juliana Stone doesn’t pull any of the punches about the petty anger that helped lead to Monroe making one bad decision.  She’s written a novel of forgiveness, but one of guilt too.  She presents complicated situations with questions of complicity, but the main redemption is that Nathan and Monroe made mistakes.  It’s not that they didn’t do stupid things that resulted in terrible outcomes; it’s that they weren’t malicious.  It could’ve happened to anybody.

Now here comes the big hurdle is this type of story: do I believe Monroe and Nathan will be all right without each other?  Did they actually heal for themselves or are they using romance as a patch?  By the end, I believed they would be all right even if they do break up in the future.  (Not unlikely, since they are teenagers.)  They both find ways to speak about what happened, and to open back up to their families and to the activities they enjoyed before.

I wish the book involved Nathan’s family more.  Monroe’s Gram is great.  She’s understanding and talks frankly to her granddaughter about getting birth control or condoms when the two start getting more serious.  But Nathan’s parents are non-entities.  They’re described as always having been permissive, but wouldn’t a terrible drunken car crash be a wake-up call to pay more attention to your kid?  They aren’t supposed to be bad parents as written, but his friends show more worry for the changes in Nathan’s personality.

I also felt that Nathan’s ex-girlfriend Rachel was handled awkwardly.  Their breakup has been a long time coming, although they are still together when Nathan meets Monroe.  The two were growing apart even before the accident, and now Rachel is even deeper into getting drunk, high, and partying.  For a book that is so much about two people seeing someone and realizing that they’re in pain and need help and then making the effort to give them that help, those same two people are pretty callous about just letting Rachel self-destruct.  No one is making an offer to listen to her.

I’m also dissatisfied with one aspect of the ending.  While Boys Like You is a YA novel, it reads like an NA novel most of the time.  The broken hero and heroine with traumatic pasts who must find love are staples of NA.  I don’t think their ages or the YA designation were a detriment to the story, but Stone could’ve aged them up one or two years and it wouldn’t have seemed weird.  The angst giving way to an earned happy ending feels right either way.  What didn’t feel right was a touch of saccharine wish fulfillment.  The ending feels like the punch was pulled at the very last moment, and it weakens the whole novel.

I’m honestly not the audience for this sort of romance.  I enjoyed reading it; Stone has an easy sort of prose and the hot summer of the Louisiana setting drew me in.  It felt like the sort of summer where people get too wild and do things they regret.  I was also sold on the physical and emotional attraction between Monroe and Nathan.  (And how much do I love a book that’s so frank about how much the heroine likes how the hero’s shorts are falling off his hips? A lot.)  I can see why it got a RITA nomination, and I probably would’ve been completely won over if not for that false note in the ending.