#waking olivia

[maddiesflame]

Waking Olivia headers

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[nabijaeeon]

olivia finnegan and will langstrom in waking olivia (2016)

[the-bibliophage]

Genre: New Adult

Rating: ★★★★

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I started reading it because I’d got a couple of chapters into another NA book, and it was so awful that I had to abandon it. So I was just looking through the books on Kindle Unlimited (which I’d recommend if you’re a NA fan) and found this. So I wasn’t necessarily expecting much, but it was actually really, really great. 

It’s well written and well thought out. The characters are realistic and I loved both of them - Olivia and Will, who tell the story in alternating first-person chapters. I felt that the chemistry and the development of their relationship was a really good aspect of the novel - no instalove here, and you can see why they start to fall in love with each other. They’re backgrounds are well fleshed out too - they both have things in their past they need to deal with, and that have shaped them into the people they are. 

I liked that the novel really addressed the issues that Olivia had. Some NA will give the main character a tragic backstory, and then solve all their problems as soon as she falls in love. Clearly, that’s not realistic and I hate that manipulation of real life hardships just to make the story interesting. This novel, however, really deals with everything that Olivia is going through, and things don’t suddenly just become fine and dandy when she falls in love. I liked that we got to see beyond that. 

I read this novel all in one sitting. Fast-paced, well-written and romantic - definitely a winner in the NA genre!