#ARC Review | Chasing Spring by R. S. Grey

ARC via author for an honest review
Goodreads // Amazon
Feb. 1, 2016

I thought I’d left Blackwater, Texas behind for good. I didn’t belong in the small town, but my dad wouldn’t listen. He dragged me back home in his beat-up truck and dropped a bomb along the way: Chase Matthews was moving in with us. He was the golden boy of my high school, my former best friend, and the last person I wanted sleeping across the hall. His presence was too great a reminder of the ghosts I was trying to forget.

I didn’t ask for a hero. I don’t want to be saved. 

To me, Lilah Calloway meant late nights sneakin’ out, moonlit hair, and sparklers in July. She was my best friend until the day she left and I’d assumed Blackwater had seen the last of her. Then, like a tempest, she rolled back into town for the final half of senior year. The chopped hair and dark devil-may-care attitude warned most people away, but I knew if I fought hard enough, I could find the lost girl.

I didn’t want to be her hero. Some girls don’t need to be saved. 

“My family’s secrets had been plucked, pressed, preserved, and put on display” (ARC).

This is a deceptively cute, carefree cover. Very, very deceptive. *eyes cover* It’s all pretty and flowery and nice. I mean, the book is gorgeous (I highlighted at least one sentence in every chapter) but goodness, it was sad. But it was also happy and hopeful. And sad. Lilah runs to her Aunt’s house in Austin after her life unravels when secrets are exposed in her tiny hometown of Blackwater, Texas. In the beginning of the novel, we’re told that her Aunt has to take a job overseas. Lilah moves back to the place where she’s spent two years trying to escape. And the person she’s trying to escape: Chase. This boy is sugary sweet, a tad bit annoying, but so completely in love with Lilah.

The reader doesn’t get the whole story at first. We get bits and pieces to ignite our curiosity, and as we read on the story becomes one of unbreakable friendship forged with a bond deeper than family, the dissolving of sanity, and the hope that things will get better molded with the marrow-deep fear that it never will. And, holy cheese and crackers, is it beautiful and heartbreaking and swoony and so, so sad. It’s so gloomy.

I downloaded the ARC while I was at school. This was my first mistake. I swear I had every intention of doing some homework last night. I really, really did. I was going to do biology and English and history. I was going to work on my extended essay. And I was going to update my IB CAS hours. But somehow (how did it happen, really?) I ended up opening my Kindle app on my phone, walking up to a chair in the game room, and just sat there. And finished the entire book. AND I REGRET NOTHING.

Lilah (whose name I pronounce LEE-LUH half of the time and LIE-LUH the other half) is broken. She doesn’t need someone to fix her. She’s obsessed with secrets. She’s falling into her mother’s patters to understand the women she was. And she is so not over Chase. He’s the boy she left behind, and whose searching for the girl she used to be—somewhere underneath all the black hair dye, stay the hell away attitude, and desperate attempt to get away from Blackwater. One thing she didn’t leave? He adoration for using the dirt to make something gorgeous bloom. She’s chasing spring.

Both of these main characters are so well fleshed out. I loved how the POV of the story flip-flopped between the two of them. Then there were the flashbacks which let the reader see how everything got started. Basically, I love the way the story is told. I love the words that were used. I love that every emotion- the good and the bad and the ugly- that was felt in CHASING SPRING was one that I could feel as well. And sometimes it was really, really good. Other times it was a special brand of fury.

The kind that sets the world on fire.

Lordy, this book was lovely. Betrayal, loss of hope, metamorphosis. Gorgeous cover. After my love for R.S. Grey’s books SCORING WILDER, this one certainly did not disappoint.