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By Your Side by Kasie West
2.0

HARD TIME CONNECTING.

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Didn’t see the day coming where I would not be into a Kasie West book. Hopefully this is a one-book case scenario.

I didn’t connect with this story or the characters. The time spent at the library was such a long chunk of the book that it caused the beginning of the story to drag. Then add on an accident I didn’t see coming that threw Autumn into a mess she didn’t plan for was complicated and hard to watch.

The relationship between Autumn and Dax was fine. I did like the way they worked together. Maybe could have had some more positive interactions. It felt like this book was trying to be more heavy in context, but struggled to really hit that note.

The expression of anxiety was a nice change of pace though. That’s not as often depicted in young adult books and as someone with anxiety, I can definitely see Autumn’s struggles. I appreciate how her friends responded, but do wish things were more out in the open in general between them.

Everything mashed in odd ways for this one and while this was a miss, I still plan of reading all of West’s books!

Overall audience notes:
- Young adult contemporary romance
- Language: none
- Romance: kisses
- Violence: car wreck (to a side character) resulting in a coma