Say What You Will by Cammie McGoveren (Review)

Series: Standalone
Genre: Contemporary
Book Length: 343 pages
Publication Date: June 3rd, 2014
Publisher: HarperTeen
Format: Hardcover
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Synopsis:

John Green's The Fault in Our Stars meets Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park in this beautifully written, incredibly honest, and emotionally poignant novel. Cammie McGovern's insightful young adult debut is a heartfelt and heartbreaking story about how we can all feel lost until we find someone who loves us because of our faults, not in spite of them.

Born with cerebral palsy, Amy can't walk without a walker, talk without a voice box, or even fully control her facial expressions. Plagued by obsessive-compulsive disorder, Matthew is consumed with repeated thoughts, neurotic rituals, and crippling fear. Both in desperate need of someone to help them reach out to the world, Amy and Matthew are more alike than either ever realized.

When Amy decides to hire student aides to help her in her senior year at Coral Hills High School, these two teens are thrust into each other's lives. As they begin to spend time with each other, what started as a blossoming friendship eventually grows into something neither expected.

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Oh, this one was a good one.

 

Like I have mentioned before in my If I Stay review, I don't read a whole lot of contemporary. It's not because I hate the genre, but it's because I prefer to read books that are set in more fantastical settings. But there are some contemporaries that are some of my all-time favorite books, like Everything Leads to You by Nina Lacour, Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell, If I Stay by Gayle Forman, and now Say What You Will by Cammie McGoveren. I did not expect that I would have so much love for this book. I thought that it would kind of be like my love for TFIOS or Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. But no. It decided it wanted to be one of my new favorite books.

Anyway, onto the actual review.

The characters and their development was without a doubt my favorite aspect, and I think the strongest, of the whole novel. I felt like every character (even the minor ones) had a role in the story and none were there just because or to be thrown a few pages later. And don't even get me started on the main characters, Amy and Matthew.

 

I absolutely loved how they grew and changed over the course of the story, from the first page to the last one their personalities developed and changed so much. And their relationship that started in the beginning. At first, they didn't know each other and they had their assumptions about each other and then in the end they are essentially boyfriend and girlfriend and their interactions were just...I loved it so much.

The plotline itself was interesting I will admit. I mean, the plotline will make people automatically compared this to TFIOS, and I can see it but aside from that the two books are nothing like each other. The major thing I see how this can be seen as a TFIOS ripoff is that the two main characters have a disability/disorder and they fall in love. But the two are different other than that.

Personally, I really liked the disability/disorder aspect of the two and I find it quirks to their characterization and how it shaped them and made them the people they are.

One thing I have to comment on before I move on is that I was slightly confused by how quickly time changed in this book. Like, on one page it would be January/February and the next it would be May/June. I didn't expect that the story would progress that fast, but it is only a minor complaint from me.

Lastly, the writing. The writing isn't the best I've ever read, however it wasn't bad at all and I found it to be great. This story is in a third person tense and it switches between both Matthew and Amy; and I, not once, didn't feel like I didn't know the characters and their thoughts well enough.

So, in the end, I would give Say What You Will by Cammie McGoveren a full 5/5 stars. This was just a fantastic book with amazing, beautiful characters, a great plot-line, and I found it just to be an amazing story. If you are a fan of contemporary and haven't read this yet, I would highly recommend this be your next read.