She's With Me by Jessica Cunsolo (Review) – Flavia the Bibliophile

Title: She’s With Me
Author: Jessica Cunsolo
Type: Fiction
Genre: YA, Contemporary, Romance
Publisher: Wattpad Books
Date published: January 7, 2020

A complimentary physical copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

A new town, a new love, another chance to stay alive.

Arriving in another new town, Amelia Collins vows to fit in and finish her senior year drama free. There can’t be any mistakes. Staying under the radar is what keeps Amelia one step ahead of the man who is trying to find and destroy her.

But when she’s befriended by a group of students who make her feel safe and loved, Amelia struggles to maintain her distance, especially when faced with her feelings for Aiden Parker, whose piercing gray eyes and strength weaken her resolve.

When Aiden’s ex-girlfriend threatens Amelia in ways that make her easy to find, she has to act quickly. Feeling crushed by her desire for a normal life and not wanting to leave her friends behind, Amelia has an impossible choice to make between survival or the chance at real love.

⤖ My Review ⬻

Before requesting a copy of She’s With Me for review, I had seen it around quite a bit. I had also seen a lot of rave reviews about it, so I was intrigued. I absolutely love the cover and the atmosphere it presents…but I did not find the same atmosphere in the story itself. This is not a bad thing, of course! It’s just something that I noted. The story of She’s With Me is considerably darker and with quite a bit of mystery added in. Yes, there is the high school setting, and there was also some humour, but overall I found the story to revolve around some dark themes as well as drama and romance.

The pacing in this book was interesting for me, and I think that this might be because She’s With Me started out as a story on Wattpad (so it was structured somewhat differently). But maybe that’s just me. Anyway, the plot had me intrigued and pulled me in. Even though I didn’t 100% click with any particular character, I was sucked in by the romance as well as this underlying ominous feeling that something bad was going to happen to someone and the other would have to rescue them. Sorry, I’m a sucker for that sort of thing! But enough rambling. The first thought I had when finishing She’s With Me was that I was glad that the sequel, Stay With Me, is already out and I don’t have to spent months (or even years) waiting for it!

⤖ About the Author ⬻

Jessica Cunsolo is an indecisive university student from a small town near Toronto, Canada. She published her first young adult novel She’s With Me, on Wattpad under the name “AvaViolet” when she was 17 years old. In just over 2 years, her story has amassed over 61 million reads and has reached the number one spot in teen fiction more times than she can count. Her story She’s With Me won the 2016 Wattys “Talk of the Town” award, as well as The 2016 Fiction Awards “Best Teen Fiction.” She also won The 2016 Writer Awards for Novelist of the Year and Wattpad Writer of the Year. Jessica enjoys hiking, the outdoors, and trying to sneak her way out of inevitable awkward situations. She can often be found daydreaming about scenarios which have a 5% chance of actually happening to her. But she doesn’t mind, since she can transform them into awesome stories which she can vicariously live through.