Review: Emmy & Oliver by Robin Benway

Title: Emmy & Oliver
Author: Robin Benway 
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release date: HarperTeen
Source: Edelweiss
Format: eARC

Rating: 4.5/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

Emmy’s best friend, Oliver, reappears after being kidnapped by his father ten years ago. Emmy hopes to pick up their relationship right where it left off. Are they destined to be together? Or has fate irreparably driven them apart?

Emmy just wants to be in charge of her own life.

She wants to stay out late, surf her favorite beach—go anywhere without her parents’ relentless worrying. But Emmy’s parents can’t seem to let her grow up—not since the day Oliver disappeared.

Oliver needs a moment to figure out his heart.

He’d thought, all these years, that his dad was the good guy. He never knew that it was his father who kidnapped him and kept him on the run. Discovering it, and finding himself returned to his old hometown, all at once, has his heart racing and his thoughts swirling.
Emmy and Oliver were going to be best friends forever, or maybe even more, before their futures were ripped apart. In Emmy’s soul, despite the space and time between them, their connection has never been severed. But is their story still written in the stars? Or are their hearts like the pieces of two different puzzles—impossible to fit together?

I really liked Emmy & Oliver, it´s a lovely coming of age book.

Emmy and Oliver were neighbors and best friends for the first seven years of their life, until the day that Oliver was kidnapped by his father and nobody saw him again. Now 10 years later, Oliver returns to his mother's house to find out that his mother never stopped looking for him but now she has a new family and is constantly fearful of losing sight of him and trying to reconnect with him. Meanwhile Emmy is ecstatic because she has her best friend back, she remembers every detail of his best friend, the secrets they used to have, but Oliver seems just barely remember her, so she gives him space, hoping that now that Oliver is back things will get better between them, or at least that's the plan at the beginning.

Emmy is a 17 year old girl, at which her life changed when she was only 7 years old, when her best friend was kidnapped but she never lose hope of ever seeing him again. But because of the traumatic event of his disappearance, Emmy's parents become overprotective, they´re very strict with her curfew and the activities she´s allowed to do, she must not do anything that her parents considered dangerous.

The book is told from the point of Emmy, so through her eyes we get to see how difficult it´s for Oliver to adjust to his new life, as when he was kidnapped by his father, he said something that made him hate-love-missed his mother, but now that he´s back he doesn´t know what he should do and what everyone expects him to do. But it has its lovable moments where Emmy and Oliver reconnect and restart their friendship, to then turn into romance.

I loved Caro and Drew characters, they´re Emmy´s best friends since childhood and were also friends with Oliver.

Emmy & Oliver is an adorable contemporary book about friendship, family, growing up, with lovable characters and little bit of romance. I highly recommend it.

Favorites quotes

"coming home feels like being kidnapped all over again"

"I am so tired of paying the price for something I never did and didn´t even want in the first place!"