Review: By Your Side by Kasie West

Title: By Your Side
Author: Kasie West
Publisher: Harper Teen
Release date: January 31st 2017
Source: Edelweiss
Format: eARC

Rating: 4/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

When Autumn Collins finds herself accidentally locked in the library for an entire weekend, she doesn’t think things could get any worse. But that’s before she realizes that Dax Miller is locked in with her. Autumn doesn’t know much about Dax except that he’s trouble. Between the rumors about the fight he was in (and that brief stint in juvie that followed it) and his reputation as a loner, he’s not exactly the ideal person to be stuck with. Still, she just keeps reminding herself that it is only a matter of time before Jeff, her almost-boyfriend, realizes he left her in the library and comes to rescue her.

Only he doesn’t come. No one does.

Instead it becomes clear that Autumn is going to have to spend the next couple of days living off vending-machine food and making conversation with a boy who clearly wants nothing to do with her. Except there is more to Dax than meets the eye. As he and Autumn first grudgingly, and then not so grudgingly, open up to each other, Autumn is struck by their surprising connection. But can their feelings for each other survive once the weekend is over and Autumn’s old life, and old love interest, threaten to pull her from Dax’s side?

This is the fifth book written by Kasie West that I´ve read and although it isn´t one of my favorites, I did enjoyed it a lot.

At the beginning of the story Autumn is locked inside a library after she was with a large group of friends and by mistake she leaves her bag with her cell phone in the trunk of one of the cars, so she doesn´t have means to communicate and for reasons explained in the book, her parents do not expect her to return home that night, so it is credible to some extent that she is locked in a public library for several days, but I´m not very sure why there aren´t telephones accessible in the areas to which she has access, but as it´s a fiction book so I pretend that everything is possible. And locked up with her is Dax, a schoolmate who has a reputation for being dangerous because he spent a few months in a juvenile reformatory, so at the beginning of their lockup they come to an arrangement to coexist until the library is open, but through their time together they get to know each other a little and Dex discovers Autumn´s, a secret that only her family knows, which is what makes them to a certain extent partners in crime, because Dax knows something about her that no one else knows.

The book is not only the story of them locked up at the library, but it also is about them returning to their normal life and how they interact at school, with her friends and the drama of the love triangle. I liked the interaction between Autumn and Dax, since it isn´t insta-love since they know each other from school, only that they had never interacted before and how after the library and the secrets they shared, how they start to have a connection that turns to attraction.

I do recommend it to those who like cute YA books with some light drama.