Saturday, March 31, 2018

Book review: Everywhere You Want to Be by Christina June

Book Summary
From author Christina June comes Everywhere You Want to Be, a modern tale inspired by the classic Red Riding Hood.

Matilda Castillo has always done what she was told, but when she gets injured senior years, she watches her dreams of becoming a contemporary dancer slip away. So when Tilly gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend the summer with a New York dance troupe, nothing can stop her from saying yes--not her mother, not her fears of the big city, and not the commitment she made to Georgetown. Tilly's mother allows her to go on two conditions: one, Tilly will regularly visit her abuela in New Jersey, and two, after the summer, she'll give up dancing and go off to college.

Armed with her red vintage sunglasses and her pros and cons lists, Tilly strikes out, determined to turn a summer job into a career. Along the way she meets new friends ... and new enemies. Tilly isn't the only one desperate to dance, and fellow troupe member Sabrina Wolfrik intends to succeed at any cost. But despite dodging sabotage and blackmail attempts from Sabrina, Tilly can't help but fall in love with the city, especially since Paolo, a handsome musician from her past, is also calling New York home for the summer.

As the weeks wind down and the competition with Sabrina heats up, Tilly's future is on the line. She must decide whether to follow her mother's path to Georgetown or leap into the unknown to pursue her own dreams.

Flo's Review
Everywhere You Want to Be is the second book by Christina June. A fun thing about it that I was n0t expecting was the connection to her first book, It Started With Goodbye. I really enjoyed seeing Tatum, her hottie boyfriend, and some of the other characters from her first book in this sophomore effort. 

Just like the first book was loosely based on Cinderella, this book was loosely based on Little Red Riding Hood. Tilly's signature accessory is a fun pair of red sunglasses, which I love. Her nemesis is a girl named Sabrina Wolfrick, a play on the Big Bad Wolf. But it felt a little forced. Tilly becomes almost obsessed with Sabrina in an unnatural way. I understand the conflict she brings to the story, but with everything else going on, I felt Tilly stressed and obsessed about it unnaturally too much.  In that aspect, it felt like June was trying a little too hard to match Tilly's story to a fairy tale. 

But this was fun story nonetheless. I enjoyed reading about Tilly falling in love New York City, and her romance played out at just the right level. (Not too much, not too little.)

I finished reading this book on the way to Apollycon, where I got meet Christina June for the first time! She was so nice, and I was delighted to learn that she has another fairy tale based book with a familiar character in the works!



Read our review of It Started With Goodbye here.

Everywhere You Want To Be comes out on May 1, 2018. Thank you to Blink YA Books for sending me an advance reader's copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

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