Read + Review: Take Me With You When You Go by David Levithan and Jennifer Niven

Bea Ahern has a tendency of running away from her problems, and this time is no different: except it is. This time she’s gone for good, leaving nothing but an email address and a hole in the life of those who knew her. Ezra Ahern has the honor of being on the receiving end of his sister’s secret emails, and it doesn’t take long for him to realize that it wasn’t just about their terrible childhoods, Bea left for something more. She wasn’t running away; she was running towards something, or someone. She’s begun her own journey in the real world; one that could uncover the truth about both her and her brother. Meanwhile, Ezra’s left dealing with their sorry excuses for a mom and stepdad, all while uncovering the skeletons of their past with Bea. Told in a series of email exchanges, Bea and Ezra’s individual journeys find a way to both parallel and intersect in unimaginable ways, making for a breathtaking story about family and finding yourself.

I really enjoyed this book because it was a lot different than I expected. I thought that most of the book’s focus would go to trying to figure out what happened to Bea, but there was more to it than that. It went very deep into each character’s fears and desires which made it easier to understand them. Also, the emails from Bea and the ones from Ezra and completely different writing styles and tones which made it much more believable that they were written by two different people. The descriptions in the book made it possible to vividly imagine the characters and different places that are described throughout. I really liked that a lot of attention was put towards this because so much of the book’s focus is on the characters themselves. Finally, I found the plot to be engaging with quite a few twists and turns that made this an interesting read.

Something memorable about this book was the dynamic between Bea and Ezra. Even while the world around them was crumbling, their relationship stayed the same. Their love for each other stayed strong no matter what came their way.