Miss You: A Novel by Kate Eberlen

(Thank you to the publisher and TLC Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book!)

about book:

A wryly romantic debut novel with echoes of One Day that asks, what if you just walked by the love of your life, but didn’t even know it?

“TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.” Tess can’t get the motto from her mother’s kitchen knickknack out of her head, even though she’s in Florence on an idyllic vacation before starting university in London.

Gus is also visiting Florence, on a holiday with his parents seven months after tragedy shattered their lives. Headed to medical school in London, he’s trying to be a dutiful son but longs to escape and discover who he really is.

A chance meeting brings these eighteen-year-olds together for a brief moment—the first of many times their paths will crisscross as time passes and their lives diverge from those they’d envisioned. Over the course of the next sixteen years, Tess and Gus will face very different challenges and choices. Separated by distance and circumstance, the possibility of these two connecting once more seems slight.

But while fate can separate two people, it can also bring them back together again. . . .

my thoughts:

I LOVED the book's cover - its so colorful and bright. Definitely makes you smile and eager to read the story within.  However, I have to admit that once I started reading, I easily stopped and put the book aside.  Yep, I DNFed Miss You.

Miss You sounded similar to One Day, which is why I wanted to read it.  Except, it was not One Day and I was sorely disappointed.  This story is about Tess and Gus.  They have a chance meeting when they are teenagers in Italy, but its literally a few seconds long that they don't even really meet.  Anyhow, they go about their lives - college, career, love, loss, etc.- for sixteen years.  During those years, there are times when they have chance encounters, but nothing happens.  They still don't know each other.  So, we get to know them. Miss You is a character-driven story that chugs along with one end in sight - will Tess and Gus finally (really) meet?  The whole point is - are they meant to be together?  Their lives never really intersect, but somehow they are meant to fall in love at some point.  Sounds vaguely interesting, right? Well, I'm not sure if it really was.  I stopped reading. I couldn't stand Tess or Gus. I get that they experienced loss and that their plans get derailed, but they were just not characters I cared about.  All they did was cheat on their partners or get cheated on.  They suffered fools gladly and that was something I did not like.  So, I gave up on Tess and Gus.

Now, I've read several reviews of Miss You and they are all praise-worthy.  I just didn't see what these other readers did.  However, I think you should definitely give some of these reviews a chance - they might just get you to read Miss You - a book that you may just LOVE.  After all, different strokes for different folks, right?

Here's the link to the TLC Book Tour schedule for: Miss You

Thank you to the publisher and TLC Book Tours for providing me with a copy of this book!