The Opposite Of Here is a wild ride but you'll love ever minute of it. I could not put this one down and loved the twists and turns it took me on.

Maybe the age gap between me and the main character too far apart for me to enjoy the book. I would categorize this book as Young Adult, but probably geared more towards the early/young teens.

Our main character, Natalie has lost her boyfriend due to a car accident. At first I thought, Wow! What a way to start off a book! Because as she was describing the event, you could definitely feel the sadness that lies within her. That was some deep s***! Definitely gave me some feels from the get go. I thought this would be a coming of age story, but the more and more I read it, the more and more I couldn't get through the book. I'll admit, I stopped at 20% - just couldn't go on any further.

Natalie's parents arrange a "sailabration" for her 17th birthday on a cruise ship with her 3 best friends. Everyone including her parents are very supportive of her and want her to have a good time and enjoy life despite her boyfriend no longer being alive. Her friends had asked her to let loose and have fun. This is where I thought you know, a buildingsroman would have fit extremely well here even if the entire duration of the book was mostly spent on the cruise ship. She moved way too fast from not ready to let go the day before the cruise, to meeting some guy at the cruise lounge and falling in love with him almost immediately. And, wait for it ... after the 3rd time she's ran into him she still doesn't even know his name! I don't know, to me it just felt like a bunch of kids talking to each other or even telling stories. I'm not saying it was bad, it just wasn't really my cup of tea. It was an easy read, the author definitely threw in a lot of every day type lingos in there from the girls ... I just wish there was something in the plot worth holding onto for me to keep pushing along. Instead, I got nothing. I am disappointed that I couldn't get myself to finish reading the book though, but I feel at 20%, I gave it a good shot already.

*Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC, in exchange for an honest review.*

This is a very easy read! It would be a great thing to read sitting by the pool, or better yet on a cruise! I did think that the mystery tried a little too hard to be twisty. I also had trouble with some of the characters, I didn't really see how these girls could be friends. The ending though... Loved it!

*I received a copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*
DNF @ 24%

This is such a shame since I really enjoyed The Leaving by the same author. I started to wonder if things would be different if I was reading an official non-ARC copy, but I don't think the formatting was at fault, mostly.

See while trying to read this, there felt like a veil between the characters and I, keeping me from getting too close. I couldn't connect, I couldn't understand actions, I couldn't feel them. It is weird to feel so disconnected from a book and my mind kept wandering. Other times I'd re-read a page and realize I hadn't let me mind wander the book literally just switched from present to flashback or detailed background out of nowhere -- this might have been ARC formatting, perhaps there will be more of a divide or marker that things are switching. Then again, I didn't think all the background or details were needed... I might have also stopped caring by then.

See, the main character is depressed. Totally understandable since her boyfriend died just months ago. What I don't understand is the need to not hang out with him instead hanging out with a guy whose name you don't know and is kinda a dick. Friends even ask to meet him and she says she'll being him only to totally not truly consider it when she is with him again.

So, I'm not sure if I dislike the main character flat out or just her while she is depressed... yet she mentions that whether the boyfriend died or not, she wouldn't want to be on a cruise and acts annoyed the whole time, acts like her friends should flock to her. So, I'm thinking I wouldn't like the main character either way, which makes a book like this very difficult for me to read.

20% in there is no thrilling aspect, I think I left just as things were going to get interesting, but I didn't like the dude either so... I don't think it would have been thriller material for me. Might recommend to people who like mysteries more than thrillers... but, again I'm not sure how often I would recommend this one.

I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest and fair review.

The plot for this book on the cover description sounded pretty interesting, so although I didn't know much about the author I decided to give this one a try. It was a little too teen angst-y for my tastes personally but if that kind of thing doesn't bother you then this would be a pretty good book for you. The plot line is pretty good and takes some interesting twists and turns. The twist at the end of the book is probably the best one and kind of wrapped up all the plot and the characters into one little circle. And while I liked it, the story overall was still just so very sad. And I felt awful for Natalie, I felt like she was just like a doormat and everyone kind of walked all over her. One of her friends betrayed her pretty badly and the girl barely even apologizes but Natalie's still fine with it. So anyways, overall I kind of liked the story but I think it would be a better fit for an actual young adult.

Well, this book certainly is the opposite of what you think it's going to be.

For one thing, there is the teenage girl friends aspect. Natalie's parents decide to help her celebrate her seventeenth birthday by taking her and her three (!) best pals on a cruise (a "sail"-a-bration, as Natalie's mother puts it). You go in expecting the girls to bicker and squabble but then realize that they are BEST FRIENDS FOREVER. While there is some squabbling, it's largely due to Natalie being almost entirely insufferable. Like to the point that you wonder why these girls are friends with her to start. There is another sort of bombshell that isn't all that surprising, given what you know about Natalie and the other people involved by the time you get to the shocking twist.

You also expect a little romance at sea. There kind of is one, but it is so secondary to everything else that you almost forget it's there. Instead, Tara Altebrando uses a mystery to keep you hooked: did a guy who Natalie met for shuffleboard (!) jump off the cruise ship?

Even this central suspense doesn't follow its trope brethren. But here is where you start to think that this sandwich could have a little less stuffing. I never fault an author for taking the unexpected route. Here, though, Tara Altebrando seems so determined to keep you off-base that she keeps throwing different pieces of meat at you. By the time the book ends, you feel as if you were on a tilt-a-whirl.

Will teens enjoy this? Yeah. Maybe. There is a particular subplot that some will connect with, and they may see parts of themselves in some of the characters. The best part about this book is that it's written on a higher level. Tara Altebrando does not dumb down her story, and that is most refreshing indeed.

Well I didn’t enjoy this book. It was very choppy and I didn’t connect to any of the characters. Natalie was ridiculously foolish. I think the mystery part of it was supposed to be intriguing. But I honestly didn’t care what happened. Disappointed.

I am writing this pretty fresh from reading it, so I think I am still in shock. The book was interesting to say the least. The author does a great job of keeping the reader engaged, and most of the time I had no idea what to expect. The book is Natalie's mental (and physical) journey of healing from her boyfriends' unexpected death, while on a cruise with her family and closest friends. The narrative is focused almost exclusively on Natalie; the characters of her friends are barely developed, and her parents' are not at all. And even though we go on the roller coaster of Natalie's emotions with her, we know nothing of her past except limited knowledge of her relationship with her deceased boyfriend.
It's not that common that a book relies so much on the present moment, and although that should be refreshing, I was curious to know more about her past (and also her future--is she going to college?!)
I didn't love the style of writing- with film scenes and directions interspersed throughout the novel (but not at the beginning), but the story was captivating and mysterious enough that I got through it pretty quickly. And it took me a good hour to pick my jaw up off the floor at the last chapter!

The Opposite of Here is the story of Natalie. Natalie is grieving over her boyfriend, who has recently died in a car accident. In an effort to cheer her up, her parents take her on a cruise for her 17th birthday with three of her closest friends.



On the first night of the cruise, Natalie meets a charming young man, who mysteriously disappears. She quickly learns that this young man is not what he appears to be. She also suspects that her friend Nora is hiding something from her. Is she just hyper-sensitive after Paul's death. Or is she starting to question everyone around her?



Altebrando has created a vivid image of life on a cruise ship for a teenager. I loved the way the story was interspersed with scripts from two-line plays; which was the girls' assignment from their film teacher. I also appreciated all of the nods to other works of art that take place on a boat, and yes, I would include the classic Love Boat as art, don't judge!



That being said, I didn't feel that I got to know any of the characters. I didn't relate to Natalie at all, and I found her friends to be insipid. I think that the ending was meant as a cliffhanger, but it wasn't compelling enough to hold my interest.



I think the story was interesting and there were many plot twists, but I wasn't sold on any of the characters, and I think the ending was a let down. I think there might be some interest among high school girls and anyone who has ever taken a cruise. I will not likely buy it for my middle school library.

The first thing I thought after finishing this book:

But what the hell does the title mean?!

Seriously, the title has literally nothing to do with what happens in this book. WTF.

The premise for this book is pretty intriguing. Still grieving teenaged girl spending her 17th birthday on a cruise ship with her three best friends and her parents. Suspicious stuff happens, and there's no use doing anything but figuring it out, because this is a cruise ship, and there's certainly not anything else going on at the time.

This book reminds me quite heavily of the Christopher Pike-esque books of my teenagedom. In saying that, I admit that this would be an excellent read for the junior high-high school age bracket looking for some light thrillers.

But also, they could do better.

This book is all over the place. So much of it doesn't make sense, and it gets to that convoluted magic-but-not-magic, we-know-readers-like-supernatural-so-how-do-we-do-this-in-a-contemporary sort of plotting that is just going to throw off your average reader.

Now, there is a twist literally right at the end that I was pleasantly surprised by. I saw some other reviewers who didn't like it, and I acknowledge it comes out of left field, but after the labyrinth maze I walked through reading this book, I found the prize at the end completely perfect.

I can't diss this book, as I said, there is a market for it. I just think a few pinches and tweaks and a firm editor could've done wonders.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book.

I really enjoyed reading The Opposite of Here. The story was, in fact, better than the description. Although it took awhile (a third or halfway through) before the mystery really picked up, it still felt well-paced and I was engaged throughout. The characters were realistic and well-developed (especially for a young adult book), and I liked the relationships among the four friends. The narrator could slip into whiny here and there, but it was fitting with the plot, and it did not interfere with my reading enjoyment. The mystery itself was interesting and more complicated than I expected.

This is a book I will recommend to my eighth grade students-- I think they would love it.

I am a huge fan of twisty mysteries that have a touch of unreliability and with that synopsis, I was eager to get to this one.

I liked Natalie well enough. There are definitely some things going on, some fairly obvious and some not quite as obvious right away. As the layer peel back, her actions make sense and yet I was still bummed at how she was treating her BFFs.

Plot wise, the story moves, but it’s repetitive. At first I thought it would add to the trickery, instead it was sort of annoying. There are a lot of moving parts here and I’m not entirely sure all of them were needed

Overall, I loved the idea of a cruise ship location and there are some things at the very end that I am borderline obsessed with. However, it was definitely lacking some tension that I was expecting.

**Huge thanks to Bloomsbury for providing the arc free of charge**

2.5 Cocktails

Days later, I still can't explain the mind trip this book took me on. Twins, who you couldn't be sure were even twins, lying friends, cheating boyfriends and what seems like the biggest set up of the century. It was all too much, at least for me, and made what could have been a great suspenseful, far-fetched but somewhat believable story into something I was just glad I made it to the end of.

This book was unfortunately a huge mess. From some of the early reviews, I was given the impression that this was an interesting thriller with a big twist of the final page. Neither was true.
The characters throughout the novel were flat and uninteresting. Natalie was whiny, unsympathetic, and often said and did things that made no sense (not talking to friends and family, going off on her own ALL the time). The other characters were pretty useless when it came down to it. They offered insight here and there, yet weren’t distinguishable and were quite unmemorable. And did she really need three friends with her? One would have been sufficient. The twin’s personalities were pretty similar even though one is supposed to be good and the other evil.
The pacing of the novel was nonexistent. There were no chapters to break up the mish mash of ramblings and attempted movie scenes. These “movie scenes” only took away from the novel for me because they were not real and only conflicted with the story and, as they weren’t separated properly from the rest of the story, caused a lot of the confusion. Also, as none of them were true throughout the book, this took a lot away from the “twist” at the end.
The plot line was thin and unbelievable. And the setting was as well. Anyone who has been on a cruise will shake their heads at many of the onboard shops and sights described here. The daily itineraries are shoddy and Natalie’s timeline doesn’t always add up with them. Many ideas were left with gaps or needed more information to become relevant to the story (the therapist, movie tie-ins, an actually ending). I felt there needed to be a lot more research done into this story.
Somewhere underneath all this was a great idea with all the fixings, it just got scattered and couldn’t be put together correctly. This needs a lot of editing and development before it should be released for the masses if it wants some rave and credibility.

Well I know which book is definitely going into my worst books of 2018.

This book had so many bad elements that I honestly couldn't find one thing that I enjoyed while reading it.

Characters: Natalie was the most boring protagonist. She didn't do anything interesting. She didn't feel anything. She just kept doing all these weird, STUPID THINGS for no apparent reason. I ended this book disappointed because I felt that she (and EVERYONE ELSE) was so one dimensional that I couldn't like her or dislike her because she didn't have anything about her to even think about. As to everyone else, I felt like we could totally eliminate two of her friends and her parents and wouldn't have missed literally anything. I felt the author just told us how the characters were and didn't actually give us moments or dialogue to prove that they were actually that way. The love interests were so stupid,underdeveloped and completely ridiculous.

Plot: WHAT KIND OF HOT MESS WAS THIS?! The whole reason Ray had for doing all the things he did was so far fetched and unbelievable that I'm still shocked this got published. The first thing natalie does when she meets a boy she thinks is hot is give him her cabin number??? She had one conversation with him and thought it was totally reasonable to give him her room number BEFORE EVEN KNOWING HIS NAME OR LITERALLY ANYTHING ABOUT HIM. She ditches her friends basically their entire cruise, and if she was hanging out with them she was complaining and moaning about how she didn't want to be there and wanted to spend all her time with a random stranger. She treats her friends and parents like such crap when they're all there to make sure SHE has a good time and she was just annoying and rude the whole time. The whole twin brothers thing was just uninteresting and not surprising. I hate how she spent her entire cruise thinking about and pining after this guy/guys and then to end the whole thing with such disinterest was just weird. Like why even do any of it then? The whole side-plot with her friend and her dead boyfriend was so obvious that I saw it from a mile away The plot overall was so bizarre and unbelievable and that was the main reason I kept reading so I was disappointed to say the least.

Writing: THE WRITING WAS THE WORST PART. Idk if it was because I had an ARC or what but this entire book needed to be reedited for grammar. So much of the dialogue didn't have quotation marks therefore HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DIFFERENTIATE WHO'S SAYING WHAT?! IS IT OUR PROTAGONIST? ONE OF HER FRIENDS? ONE OF THE BOYS? SOME RANDOM CHARACTERS? I couldn't tell half the time because it didn't have proper quotation marks! Another horrible part was there would be these awful jumps between scenes and it felt so abrupt. The entire book had such bad pacing issues. Combine the two and it makes for a very confusing,very jarring reading experience. Because of these issues it made it very hard for me to stay invested in the story. Also the weird lack of chapters was the WORST. There was actually a point where the author wrote the words "Harrumph!" COMING FROM A TEENAGE BOY. WHAT TEENAGE BOY SAYS HARRUMPH IN THE YEAR 2018?!


This book was bad. The end

I'd have liked it better if it wasn't so predictable. The only thing that truly surprised me was the reason behind the "evil" twin's actions. Otherwise, I figured out most of it well before things were revealed. Also, I need some more flaws in the characters that people my novels...if they are too perfect or sparkly, I lose interest. Fast. I finished it because I think it would be good for reluctant readers (especially girls) and I wanted to be able to recommend it properly. But I didn't love it. I also didn't hate it. It was entertaining now and then and I liked the cruise ship setting.

Natalie and her family go on a cruise with three of Natalie’s friends to celebrate her 17th birthday. On the very first day, Natalie meets a guy in the teen area and they hit it off. But then he disappears and because of the things he said to her, she thinks he jumped. She then meets another boy who is his twin named Michael. Together, Michael and Natalie try to find the twin before he does something bad to someone or himself because according to Michael, his brother is not a nice person. Natalie pretty much ignores her friends, only spending a short amount of time with them. Instead she is obsessed with finding a guy who she barely knows. Also, they are on this cruise because Natalie’s boyfriend had recently died in a car crash and her parents wants to help her cope. There are a few surprises, things come to light about Natalie, Natalie’s relationship with her boyfriend, one of her friends who was a little bitchy and the twin brothers. A little bit of Hitchcock was thrown in literally and figuratively. This was an okay story, not one of my favorites. Natalie was a well-developed character but I think her parents showed up maybe three times and you don’t learn too much about her friends. I didn’t care for any of those characters. It seemed like Natalie was putting a lot on the line for a guy she had just met. I wanted to say wake up and just enjoy your vacation, he isn’t your problem.

Natalie is on a birthday cruise with her parents and three best friends. They all thought it would be a good experience for Natalie, who is grieving the death of her boyfriend nine months ago. When Natalie meets an intriguing boy who ends up having a twin, a whirlwind mystery ensues.

I really liked the premise of The Opposite of Here, and there were some really well written passages. Overall though, I found it to be very disjointed. The various movie scenes were confusing and messed with the flow of the book. I also wanted the ending to be less far-fetched. Probably not one we'll purchase or promote with our students.

I enjoyed this mysterious young adult thriller but I didn't love the pacing. I did enjoy reading it and I was interest to see exactly where the author was going to take it but it didn't grab me and hold on to me as much as I had hoped it would. Over all I do believe a lot of my students will enjoy it.

I enjoyed the interpersonal relationships of this teen cruise ship mystery, but found the "mystery" and its solution underwhelming and hard to believe.

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.