Review: Winter Longing - Tricia Mills

Where I got it: Arc from the publisher
Rating: 3.5 stars
Cover Rating: 3.5 stars (it's simple but pleasant, it looks like a love story)
Genre: Young Adult
Publication Date: August 12, 2010
Publisher: Razorbill
Page Count: 266 p.


You know that friend you grow up with and end up starting to have feelings for when you get older? Well, this is the case with Winter and Spencer. Soon after Winter confesses her feelings to Spencer he has to leave to take an airplane license test. When Spencer never returns and a plane wreckage is found up in the icy mountains of Alaska, Winter is crushed. She can't even turn to her friend Lindsay who is also suffering from the loss of Spencer. Soon though, Winter's next door neighbor seems to be interested in more than being neighbors. He is there for her trying to get her back to normal instead of hiding in her house hoping for Spencer to come back over those mountains.

This was a heart-breaking novel about a girl who loses a boy so soon after finally getting him. It's harder to lose someone you've just started dating, because there was no time for the relationship to turn sour. I really enjoyed the character's in this novel and their authentic emotions. Everyone dealt with their grief differently which I thoroughly appreciated. At one point Winter is at a hockey game and finds herself cheering along, this I can totally relate to. When you're at a school game and all of a sudden the school spirit and the adrenaline of the game just takes you and your cheering and groaning with the rest of the crowd. I also loved that they did actual homework. They had study-groups that weren't necessarily relevant to the plot but are a necessary evil in a book about teenagers. So many books lack that aspect that realistically consumes most of a teen's life. I enjoyed that between the chapters there were little snippets of the past and then later on quotes. It broke up the chapters nicely and added more of a background to Spencer and Winter. I do wish however that they were either all background story or all quotes. I think it's a little weird to suddenly switch. I would settle for alternating between the two also. I just didn't like how it was all background info and then all quotes. The novel seemed too long however, not a lot of new things happened and it was a little repetitive at times. It reminded me of (oh god a Twilight comparison) when Edward had left Bella in New Moon and she just sits around moping and being a hollow shell of a person and all that. It just seemed to go on unrealistically too long with not a lot in between. Maybe I'm being insensitive, but I mean I know she's upset and now can we fast-forward to when she moves on. (I guess I'm just not sappy enough) Overall this was an enjoyable story about love, loss and moving on to new things even when it seems impossible.

First Line:
"The drone of a plane engine stopped me in my tracks, and the adrenaline surged through my veins."

Favorite Line:

"Bookish girl and hot hockey player--in what world besides fiction did that kind of pairing happen?"