Member Reviews
Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. I have attempted it on a number of occasions but unfortunately I haven’t been able to get into it.
Full of all the good things I love in a YA (romance, friendship, tragedy, secrets), Armentrout has penned an easy read that has just enough going for it to keep you hooked. Lena is a great narrator and I really enjoyed seeing her friends and family through her eyes and moving with her as she deals with the aftermath of a tragedy. The boy next door storyline is as cliche and wonderful as you would expect in a YA romance and while this book doesn't add anything new to the genre, it certainly does a great job of making you fall in love with these characters. With an important reminder to stop, think and make better choices, I couldn't recommend this book enough.
*5 Stars*
Copy kindly received via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
Whoa. This one was intense. It’s a very emotional story about the choices that people make, which can go horribly wrong, and dealing with the aftermath. Particularly survivors guilt.
I went into this one fairly blind and I was hooked right from the word go. This is a very real and relatable story, and as you read, it really makes you think about how often the events that unfolded in this story really happen. All too often, unfortunately.
Lena is our main character and we learn about she and her friends until suddenly something happens and we’re thrown into this emotional roller coaster of a story. Whilst I have never dealt with something like this myself, every single thing that she felt and feared was completely relatable and understandable and I was on edge as I read this and wondering what would happen between her and her remaining friends.
She has this complicated relationship with her best friend and neighbour Sebastian, she has her friends at school and they were all there that fateful night. Because the story is introduced to us with an initial part of the life changing event, it then immediately goes back the vents before hand and leading up to this time. So we really get to know some of these main characters before tragedy strikes.
After the event, we’re struggling with Lena to process everything, and this was such a real book that I felt everything she was going through. It’s definitely not a light story, but something that I think we can ALL relate to. One split second decision can change a life, or lives, forever. And for more than one person.
A real, raw and emotional tale, I highly recommend.
A fast, emotional contemporary novel. Unfortunately it wasn't for me, and I struggled to be invested in the main character and her story.
I really enjoyed this book.
This book deals with some heavy subject matter and I really loved the positive representation about speaking to a counselor following a traumatic event.
I also really appreciated what the author was trying to convey about accepting responsibility for your decisions but also not letting one mistake define the rest of your life.
Definitely a YA contemporary that I would recommend picking up.
This book is one of Jennifer's best works!I enjoyed it a lot and it touch me in so many ways!Jennifer has a way with her words, I was hooked from the beginning and mesmerized.
“I should’ve listened to that little voice in my head and that feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I hadn’t. If I had, today would’ve been different. Tomorrow would be like all the better yesterdays.”
The themes most present in this book are consequences and forgiveness, but I will not say anything else because I don't want to give anything away! I love how Jennifer captured all the different friendship dynamics that goes along with groups of friends. Each separate person in the group honestly felt like a real person.The romance between Sebastian and Lena was so adorable, I really loved how he treated her.
My first Jennifer L. Armentrout book and I quite enjoyed it!
Okay I read this entire book in one sitting- it's SUCH a YA Contemporary novel, but I eat that up. There's a bit of everything here- funny friends, heartache, romance, grief, death, family drama etc etc etc. Like I say, everything a YA novel would typically include. Difference is, this was done really well, if a bit obviously. Much in the way of a Sarah Dessen novel, it's a tad formulaic, but fortunately I liked the characters (even if Lena made everything far more dramatic than it needed to be) and it really did tug at the heart strings.
I think above all else, Sebastian is bloody golden. Much, much love for this romantic lead who had to patiently wait around for Lena to get her shit together, but very glad he did because we were well rewarded by such a cute pairing.
The story didn't quite end up being my cup of tea - perhaps because of the way it puts you right inside a teenage girl's head (not somewhere I really want to spend time!), and also the fact that I found myself siding with the parents, or a bit frustrated with how the protagonist behaved. I also wasn't quite sure how I felt about the Sebastian and how she feels about him storyline - to be honest I found him a bit controlling or something some of the time?
Personally, I think I would have preferred a bit more subtlety in the way that some of the issues were addressed - I found the trauma and emotion really blunt and in my face, which made for a pretty uncomfortable read. But, as I say above, I'm not necessarily quite the main audience, and I do think there are a lot of important issues touched on - it could also provide a good opening for discussing some of these issues. Also, in case it isn't obvious, there's some pretty trigger-y stuff in here, so if that is a concern for you please make sure you find out more before you start.
I don't usually read books of this genre, but I'm glad I decided to give a chance to this in particular.This book is not just one more among many, he brings a very important message, no matter the age that you have you have sometimes go unnoticed.Who ever did the attitude of the protagonist who cast the first stone, this book is a great story and brings a very important message that must be absorbed by all, without exception,
I Love this book.
I love the cover of this book. I think it’s very eye catching and immediately made me want to read it. Love the colours and the title is intriguing enough. I’ve read Jennifer L. Armentrout before – I think I started one of her paranormal series but like many, never got around to locating all of the books to complete it. This is a straight up contemporary focusing on Lena, her neighbour Sebastian and their group of friends in the summer leading up to their final year of school. They are preoccupied with things like college choices, potential sporting scholarships etc but are still finding time to hang out and go to parties.
At first this is kind of a bit of a bland story about Lena and her mad crush on Sebastian, whom she has known since she was around seven or eight. She believes this crush is unrequited, something that’s heightened when she does something and Sebastian doesn’t really respond in the way she’d hoped, despite the clues she’d been given. But then at some point into the book it takes a pretty serious and devastating turn and all of a sudden, the romance (or potential romance) takes a serious backseat and the book focuses on Lena’s inability to really deal with what happened, process it and begin to move on as well as her crippling guilt of the circumstances surrounding what has happened.
I enjoyed Lena as a character and thought she was quite well developed. She’s quite damaged by what happened with her parents and even though it’s been a few years, it seems as though it really still impacts on her and her life quite a lot. Although she’s been crushing on Sebastian for years, she seems reluctant to really talk about it or even acknowledge it properly to her close friends (perhaps because until recently, Sebastian has had a girlfriend). She has a good relationship with her mother, actively participates at school (she plays volleyball, which she loves although she hates the training drills), works a part time job and finds time to socialise. In this book, Lena makes a mistake. It’s possibly a mistake that anyone could make – I thought back and there were times in my life where I could’ve made this same mistake. It could’ve had absolutely no bearing on her life but unfortunately the mistake Lena makes ends up resulting in an horrific tragedy. In the ‘after’, Lena is a different person – overwhelmed by guilt, she withdraws from those she has been closest to, including Sebastian and her friends. She isn’t able to express to them how she feels and what truly happened, for fear that they will blame her as she blames herself. I loved her book obsession as well – could definitely relate to that!
I think the way in which the author explored this was both realistic and also positive but without ever seeking to exonerate Lena from the choice that she made. It’s true that she does make a bad choice but she isn’t the only one that makes bad choices. Quite a few people made bad choices and they are all reasons why what happened, happened. It’s a good look at how a seemingly harmless choice to go along with the crowd can have some really devastating consequences and how it can be hard to speak up in these circumstances. It’s really hard to explore this without giving away precisely what happens to Lena and the result of all those choices but I liked the way the author tackled this. There was a bluntness to it, no attempt to really soften it and it shouldn’t be softened I don’t think. I think the attitude of “it’ll be okay” can be really harmful with this particular issue and the more it’s called out as completely unacceptable, the better.
I didn’t really like Sebastian as a character and a large portion of the book revolved around him. He gave off a lot of really confusing mixed messages and acted like a bit of a brat in the first part of the book and I couldn’t really understand what had Lena so enthralled with him. But he did step up quite a bit in the second part of the book and he was very good to Lena after what happened, even when she’s withdrawn from everyone and pushes everyone away. Ultimately though, I just didn’t have that investment in their romance and it does make up such a huge part of the book. I liked most of the other things though – Lena’s relationship with her friends, their dynamic, her family stuff. So I guess this one was a little bit mixed – things I enjoyed, other things just didn’t really work for me so much.
6/10
Turn on the news any night of the week and it's possible you'll see a story dealing with the events of If There's No Tomorrow. It's such a relevant subject matter, but being as the synopsis for the book doesn't really allude to what that is I'm not really going to delve too closely into that. You're much better off going in not knowing. .
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Life can change in an instant. One day you're making plans for your future. You have dreams and hopes and plans. And then, in the blink of an eye everything can change. That future you were planning doesn’t seem so achievable or important. .
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I really liked Lena from the get-go. I found her so relatable and down to earth. She wasn't perfect. She made bad choices and decisions. But I enjoy flawed characters so much because they're real. It’s so much easier to become invested if you’re able to relate to characters and their situations, and that was the case with Lena. Her love of books was an instant win for me. JLA does that often in her books and for me, she can’t go wrong with that. .
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Sebastian is Lena’s neighbour, friend, and the boy she’s been in love with for years. He was so easy to love! He was sweet, and protective, and caring. I loved the friendship that he had with Lena. It wasn’t always’s smooth sailing, but when things were good between them there was such an ease to their friendship. .
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I have to say that I thought that there were times when one person or another was a little hard on Lena. She showed a real strength in dealing with everything, and I really admired that about her. .
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Don’t go into this one expecting a fast paced story. That’s not what this is. If There's No Tomorrow is friendships, it's falling in love, it's dealing with the choices you make, it's growing up. .
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Whether you're a long time fan of JLA or new to her awesome writing, pick this one up for a read and let me know what you think.
To say I’m a huge fan of Jennifer L Armentrout’s would be a little bit of an understatement.
I read everything she writes and adore her work and have done so ever since I discovered her Lux Series a few years ago.
And as with all her books, from the first page of If There’s No Tomorrow I was sucked into the world that she had created with her words.
I’ve shed many an ugly tear while reading J.L.A’s previous works but never before have I been hit by so many competing emotions at once.
I cried, I laughed and cried some more.
J.L.A’s words are so powerful, the characters she creates so supremely real that you can’t help but feel the emotions, such complex, turbulent emotions that the heroine, Lena, is experiencing.
At the beginning of the book Lena Wise is a somewhat optimistic girl, always looking forward to tomorrow, especially as she starts her senior year. She wants to spend as much time with her friends as she can before they all move on to college and she is thinking about letting her childhood best friend Sebastian know how she really feels about him, but with one decision, that optimism is shattered and Lena is left reeling.
I don’t want to get too involved in the heavy theme that’s prevalent throughout this book because it would give away too much of the story but I will say that this book deals honestly and thoughtfully with circumstances that could happen to anyone, either adult or young adult and although this book is technically classified as a YA or NA book, I firmly believe that it's a book that could be easily read and enjoyed by both teenagers and adults.
This book centres around dealing with the repercussions and consequences of one’s actions and of learning to forgive and to fight to live, to allow yourself to live.
If There’s No Tomorrow is an emotionally charged, thought provoking book with a female lead battling with the complexity of her emotions and mental state and a swoon-worthy male lead (J.L.A always creates such great book boyfriends!) who wants to be the rock his childhood best friend (who wants more) leans on, but Lena struggles to let herself feel, let herself lean on anyone:
‘The acute sense of awareness that always accompanied this kind of closeness was there. A shivery wave that rippled over my skin. It didn’t…it didn’t feel right. That aware feeling. Like I shouldn’t feel those things after what had happened. It wasn’t right.’
I’m not going to tell you anything else about this book. Like whether Lena finds more with Sebastian and if she allows herself to lean on Sebastian when she needs to.
I’m not going to tell you anything else because I want you to read this story. I want you to take this journey for yourself and experience it because I believe that it’s a story that everyone should read.
An arc of If There’s No Tomorrow was generously provided to me by Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Review Scheduled to go live on blog on September 4th @ Naomi’s Reading Palace—http://nomisparanormalpalace.blogspot.com.au
What an amazing read If There's No Tomorrow by Jennifer L. Armentrout turned out to be! It's the type of book that will leave a huge impact on the reader, and I know it will be on my mind for a long time to come. I fell in love with all the characters and my heart shattered when I realised what happened. It was truly a masterpiece, and I cannot imagine how difficult this story would've been to write.
The characters were just like other normal teenagers, finishing their final year of school, but they weren't perfect, they made mistakes and one decision changed life as they knew it. The emotional turmoil I felt was amazing. I saw the close friendships that had been developed, the love that was strong between others, but I also felt the loss and the difficulty of trying to get past a situation that had turned numerous lives upside-down.
Lena was such a nice sweet girl, who had close friends and her best friend was Sebastian. She wasn't a popular girl, more of a nerdy girl who loved to read. She had it a little hard at home, as her parents had split, but she was positive and bubbly most of the time. I could see that her relationship with Sebastian was shifting, but they were both struggling with those teenage emotions and hormones. I loved Sebastian, he was the jock guy, but he was kind and caring and always had time for Lena.
Jennifer L. Armentrout is an author that I have loved over the years. She creates characters that are easy to relate to and puts them in situations that we may face at some stage in our lives. The connection between the characters felt real and I was hoping that Lena and Sebastian would be able to get through the rough time together. I hope we get more stories from this world, because I would love to see other perspectives of this situation.
If There's No Tomorrow was a well written coming of age novel focused on a character who lets one mistake excessively weigh her down. I haven't read many of Jennifer L Armentrout's contemporary novels, but reading this one makes it seem like I should probably be giving her others a go.
There were many times throughout the novel where protagonist Lena was incredibly frustrating in her being unable to rely on the support of her friends and family- not allowing them to help unless they basically forced her to. But this was quite consistent with what may happen when someone feels so guilty about something that has happened.
The characters are relatively well developed, with Lena and Sebastian being the ones who are obviously in the foreground. I also loved how supportive Lena's family were, and felt the subplot regarding her father was well handled as well. I did feel that some of her friends were characterised somewhat stereotypically, which is why you'll see that the character rating below is slightly lower than the other ratings.
The novel takes on a serious issue which I won't specifically go into in this review because some people may consider it a spoiler (especially as it's not mentioned in the review I feel like it's meant to somewhat be a mystery). The issue is actually quite well handled and relevant to today's younger generation, and it felt like there was a "message" being told without being too preachy. Some aspects of the issue felt a bit unresolved at the end, but that was likely because those aspects weren't the focus of the novel.
Overall, quite a good book that certainly makes me want to go try some of Armentrout's other contemporary novels.
Ratings
Overall: 8/10
Plot: 4/5
Romance: 4/5
Writing: 4/5
Characters: 3.5/5
Cover: 3/5
Let me start by saying that I am yet to come across a book by Jennifer L Armentrout that I have not loved and ' if there's no tomorrow' is no exception. I could not have been more excited I have been waiting for months to buy this book and it didnt disappoint.
We start with Lena in and out if consciousness in the hospital scared and unable to wake up. Then we jump back to where her story began. I really enjoyed the first half of the book. It felt like the typical easy reading ya book. high school friends, going to parties friends, untold feelings for each other. But then after Lena makes a choice she cant take back everything changes
The second half of the book delves into the aftermath and consequences of that decision. The pain it caused Lenas friends and their families and the physical and emotional pain it caused Lena who was wracked with guilt believing it was her fault and could have stopped it all if she had only been a stronger person.
This book was an emotional journey that has both its ups and downs. Showing the strength of true friendship and that people will always surprise you if you just open up and let them in.