Back When You Were Easier to Love

Back When You Were Easier to Love
by Emily Wing Smith

What's worse than getting dumped? Not even knowing if you've been dumped. Joy got no goodbye, and certainly no explanation when Zan - the love of her life and the only good thing about stifling, backward Haven, Utah - unceremoniously and unexpectedly left for college a year early. Joy needs closure almost as much as she needs Zan, so she heads for California, and Zan, riding shotgun beside Zan's former-best-friend Noah. Original and insightful, quirky and crushing, Joy's story is told in surprising and artfully shifting flashbacks between her life then and now. Exquisite craft and wry, relatable humor signal the arrival of Emily Wing Smith as a breakout talent. 

-Hardcover, 304 pages Published April 28th 2011 by Dutton Childrens Books

Food to Eat While Reading: Lost in Love Chicken Alfredo Pizza

Lost in Love Chicken Alfredo Pizza
from The 2012 Book Blogger's Cookbook

This book has a different style to it.  I like how it bounces around from past to present--just like a teenager who has lost her boyfriend and doesn't know why.

Joy is in love with the idea of being in love, aren't we all?  Her voice is natural and easy.  She makes lists and gives asides that provide insight.  The short, entertaining chapters of the book make it a quick read. 

The progression from Joy's obsession with a boyfriend she things she knows to discovering what has beer there all along is handled expertly.  When the romance plays out in the end it is all the more sweet and fulfilling.  

The setting is a small Mormon community where certain things are expected.  The author used the backdrop as a parallel to the main theme of non-conformity.

On the journey, I learned with Joy that not everything is how it appears and I can do something because I believe in it, not because someone thinks I can believe in it.