Review: Return To Me by Justina Chen Headley

Title: Return To Me

Author: Justina Chen Headley

Publisher: HBG Canada

Publication date: January 15, 2013
Genre(s): Young Adult (Contemporary/Paranormal)

Source: NetGalley

Format: Digital ARC

Pages: 352

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Nothing is going as planned for Rebecca Muir. She's weeks away from starting college--at a school chosen specifically to put a few thousand miles of freedom between Reb and her parents. But her dad's last-minute job opportunity has her entire family moving all those miles with her! And then there's the matter of her unexpected, amazing boyfriend, Jackson, who is staying behind on the exact opposite coast.
And if that isn't enough to deal with, mere days after moving cross-country, Reb's dad drops shocking, life-changing news. With her mother and brother overwhelmed and confused, Reb is left alone to pick up the pieces of her former life. But how can she do that when everything can change in an instant? How can she trust her "perfect" boyfriend when her own dad let her down? Reb started the year knowing exactly what her future would hold, but now that her world has turned upside down, will she discover what she really wants?

Justina Chen Headley wrote a very dear novel to my heart, North of Beautiful. I found her writing to be powerful and her characters and plot to portray the lives that many people nowadays go through, so when I found out she had a new novel, I immediately picked it up. However, Return To Me, even with its soul-searching and signature writing of Headley, did not impress me and in the end I passed it as a good, but not great read. 

Rebecca Muir's life comes crashing down when she discovers something about her father and ends up doubting every single person in her life, especially her boyfriend. In the beginning, I found Rebecca's attitude towards her mother, sneering and condescending, to be a bit of a turn off to the novel. My mother and I are very close and I acknowledge all of her sacrifices for me, so I didn't understand how Rebecca could only look at her mother's need to be organized and in control as something to snicker about with her father. Something else that I found out of place was the paranormal aspect of this novel. I am not a big fan of when contemporary novels have a hint of paranormal to it, and Return To Me had that. I found myself disregarding anything paranormal in the novel and just focused on Rebecca's relationships with everyone around her and how she is dealing with the drastic change in her life, something Headley is good at conveying to the readers. 

I did enjoy Return To Me but I would have enjoyed it so much if the author focused on the contemporary part of the novel. I just didn't know where to direct my attention towards, plus I'm not that big of a paranormal fan and I entered reading Return To Me thinking it will be the same emotional ride that I took with North of Beautiful, a novel that I recommend to everyone to read. As for Return To Me, I recommend it to fans who like a mix of genres in their novels as well as a down to earth novel that centers around family, relationships, and emotions surrounding them all. 

 

Books by Justina Chen Headley: 

North of Beautiful