Tuesday, March 18, 2014

REVIEW: Amy and Matthew by Cammie McGovern

Amy and Matthew by Cammie McGovern was a really beautiful love story and it has quickly become one of my favourite books that I've read so far this year.  I love how wonderful both Amy and Matthew are as characters and how each of the issues that they are dealing play a part in keeping them apart and also for bringing these two together.

I really loved getting to know these characters and watching them interact. You can tell right from the first pages of Amy and Matthew that these two main characters have this great connection already without having spoken to each other but once or twice over the years.  But now it is their senior year in high school and Amy has decided that she wants things to change. And so instead of having adult carers help her at school because of her cerebral palsy, she insists her parents hire student carers instead. And Amy asks for one person in particular: Matthew, the boy who sees her despite her disability.

I think the thing that I loved the most about this book and these characters is the fact that yes, Amy has cerebral palsy which affects her physically and especially her mobility, and Matthew has OCD, which has an affect on his emotional state and his behaviours, but what I loved most about this book is how much Amy and Matthew's personalities shine through this book.  The cerebral palsy and the OCD are aspects of both of their lives but they are not the defining factors of who they are. And I loved that about this book. 

There felt like a lot of truth that came out in Cammie McGovern's writing. About Amy's loneliness and her parent's over-protectiveness and of Matthew's anxieties.  It was really great to see Amy and Matthew form a strong enough friendship that allowed for each of them to talk to the other about their concerns and it was really apparent, especially in Matthew's case, how much of an affect the other had on each of their own well-being.

I knew right from the start and from the cover that is definitely a love story between these two main characters but I didn't expect for there to be very many surprises in where the story goes in terms of their relationship. This really isn't as straight-forward as I imagined and things got all kinds of unexpected towards the end.  Still, I really enjoyed this book. It was an interesting insight into two really well-developed characters and a relationship that changed them both for the better.

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