Forever for a Year

Starred review from May 4, 2015
Carolina Fisher is a newly minted high-school freshman with big hopes for the year ahead. Trevor Santos is a jaded transfer student from California, who isn’t interested in anything his new Illinois school has to offer—until he meets Carolina. Writing in the teenagers’ alternating perspectives, debut author Gottfred captures the starry-eyed exhilaration of first love (and nervous first explorations of sex) with tenderness and humor. Wearing her heart and her insecurities on her sleeve, Carolina is exuberant in her joy about Trevor (“I said I liked a boy to his face. And he said he liked me. What did this mean? I must know what this means or I will die”), while Trevor’s self-delusion that he isn’t falling hard for Carolina and his reflections on the looming family problems they both face are just as honest and realistic. In short, Gottfred’s characters actually sound, think, and act like real people, not the polished, best versions of themselves. Readers will need hearts of steel not to fall for this love story and its two storytellers. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jill Grinberg, Jill Grinberg Literary Management.

May 1, 2015
Two teens experience an intense year of first love. Carolina and Trevor, a pair of emotionally intuitive, gifted athletes, are drawn to each other on the first day of high school and soon discover a heady physical chemistry. Debut novelist Gottfred alternates between Carolina's and Trevor's deeply earnest voices to tease out both the elation and the anguish of headlong first love. This technique is now almost cliched, but it works here thanks to the psychological heft and frankness of the protagonists' narration. Each longs for a romance based on total honesty, but as both struggle with mistrust in their relationships with their parents, neither fully trusts the other to accept their flaws, setting up future conflicts almost immediately. It's refreshing to see both male and female characters striving to sort out the messy, complex feelings of all kinds that go along with an active but secret sex life and to see how those experiences help them mature substantively (and age appropriately) in their relationships with both their peers and their parents-who are much better at parenting than they are at marriage. The downside of using alternating perspectives is length-this novel would have benefited from tighter editing-but Gottfred is plainly a talent to watch. Both emotionally satisfying and sure to be much discussed. (Fiction. 14-16)

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April 1, 2015

Gr 9 Up-Carolina and Trevor meet on the first day of their freshman year when Carolina gives Trevor two sheets of paper and a pencil so he can take notes in class. For both, it is near love at first sight. For Carolina, her freshman year is a chance to start fresh and be one of the popular girls while getting over her dad's infidelity to her mom. For Trevor, it's his second time attempting a freshman year, but in a new city as his family tries to pick up the pieces of his mother's attempted suicide. The teens fall hard and fast, sharing just about every first love experience one could imagine. Like Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park (St. Martin's, 2013), this work is a tale of first love from the protagonists' alternating points of view. Gottfried gives this concept a new spin by providing a detailed account of all aspects of this budding relationship, from every insecure thought to the last "I love you." The author captures the unhealthy codependency of crushes in a way that will be relatable to teens. Some graphic sex scenes makes this title appropriate for older readers. VERDICT A swoon-inducing and heartbreaking novel for most YA collections.-Adrienne L. Strock, Teen Library Manager, Nashville Public Library

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