Words in Deep Blue (Review)

Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley
Genre: Young Adult/Contemporary
Format: ARC (received from Penguin/First in Line)
Page Length: 273 pages
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: June 6, 2017

About Words in Deep Blue (via Goodreads):

Love lives between the lines.

Years ago, Rachel had a crush on Henry Jones. The day before she moved away, she tucked a love letter into his favorite book in his family’s bookshop. She waited. But Henry never came.

Now Rachel has returned to the city—and to the bookshop—to work alongside the boy she’d rather not see, if at all possible, for the rest of her life. But Rachel needs the distraction, and the escape. Her brother drowned months ago, and she can’t feel anything anymore. She can’t see her future.

Henry’s future isn’t looking too promising, either. His girlfriend dumped him. The bookstore is slipping away. And his family is breaking apart.

As Henry and Rachel work side by side—surrounded by books, watching love stories unfold, exchanging letters between the pages—they find hope in each other. Because life may be uncontrollable, even unbearable sometimes. But it’s possible that words, and love, and second chances are enough.

Words cannot describe my love for Words in Deep Blue. While the synopsis did express that there was tragedy in Rachel's life, I had not anticipated how much this book would DESTROY me. There was definitely an adorable romance in there that I loved, but I was also a sobbing mess for most of the book as well.

The way the story blended those two aspects was unlike anything I've read before. Typically in books, I've seen a sort of savior narrative where the love interest comes in and rescues the other from all the problems or thinks they could have been the one to save them, but this story wasn't like that all. In fact, I got to see that there were moments of vulnerability in all the characters (not just Rachel and Henry), and while they each supported each other, they weren't simply able to wash all the pain and hardships away.

While I've probably said this a million times before in the past, I love character-driven stories. This was one of them, and the author went above and beyond my expectations. Crowley put so much detail into building each and every character, major and minor, weaving their narratives together and creating believable and lovable people who each had their own developments and problems to overcome.

I don't want to go too much into the plot or romance for fear of spoiling (and if I'm being honest, I'm also writing this review several weeks after finishing so some of the details are a bit blurry), but I absolutely loved all aspects of this book. It's way too hard for me to articulate how wonderful this book was, and this review definitely does not give it justice, but please give it a try because it definitely surprised me in the best of ways and it's a new favorite of mine.

My rating: 4.5 stars