Review : What I Thought Was True by Huntley Fitzpatrick

Summary (from Goodreads) 

Title : What I Thought Was True
Author : Huntley Fitzpatrick
Publication Date : April 15th 2014
Publisher : Dial Books
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From the author of My Life Next Door comes a swoony summertime romance full of expectation and regret, humor and hard questions.

Gwen Castle's Biggest Mistake Ever, Cassidy Somers, is slumming it as a yard boy on her Nantucket-esque island this summer. He's a rich kid from across the bridge in Stony Bay, and she hails from a family of fishermen and housecleaners who keep the island's summer people happy. Gwen worries a life of cleaning houses will be her fate too, but just when it looks like she'll never escape her past—or the island—Gwen's dad gives her some shocking advice. Sparks fly and secret histories unspool as Gwen spends a gorgeous, restless summer struggling to resolve what she thought was true—about the place she lives, the people she loves, and even herself—with what really is.

A magnetic, push-me-pull-me romance with depth, this is for fans of Sarah Dessen, Jenny Han, and Deb Caletti.

Personal Thoughts

After My Life Next Door, Huntley Fitzpatrick asserted herself as one of my favorite YA contemporary authors. I bought What I Thought Was True the week it came out but I resisted reading it and reading reviews of it because I had such high hopes for it. While What I Thought Was True wasn't as fantastic of a read as My Life Next Door for me, I still wound up enjoying the book to bits.

One reason why Huntley Fitzpatrick is such a successful author for me is because of how deeply she enriches her characters. You know when you're picking up a book by her that they aren't going to be any one-dimensional characters. They are all wonderfully developed and are realistic with their blemishes and strengths. Gwen was such a character. I had a bit of a rough time with her initially, mostly because she came across as the kind of judgmental person who has preconceived ideas about other people and behaves according to these skewed ideas with them. It was especially hard to watch her treatment of Cass, her love interest. However, the entire point of this book was Gwen's growth as she learned about how what she might have thought about people from their get-go didn't necessarily mean they were that way. She also became easier to warm up as we got glimpses to her more endearing personality traits. Her relationship with her brother, Emory, who suffered from a mental illness and her cousin, Nic, who lived with her and her family, especially highlighted those traits. Gwen had strong bonds with them and I'm always for strong family relationships in YA books and Huntley Fitzpatrick is talented at that. Cass, her love interest and friend, was also absolutely brilliant as a character. He was charming, sweet and was there whenever Gwen needed him despite her not always being the nicest to him. He was the perfect YA book boyfriend, down to earth and a gentleman. We also meet a lot of secondary characters who had their own stories to tell and were well-developed.

The romance between Gwen and Cass was lovely. We know something happened between Gwen and Cass before the summer and there were multiple hints throughout the book as to what it was, but watching them slowly and steadily build their relationship over the course of the book was heart-warming. I loved watching Gwen become more open with Cass as she got to know him on a more profound level and learning to also grow as a person in the process. However, I didn't like the lack of communication that existed between the two of them sometimes. I tend to like my YA drama romances on the more fluffier and less dramatic side and Gwen and Cass did have a huge dramatic argument that sucked a little bit of that loveliness out of the romance. Nevertheless, it was a cute relationship that the two of them shared and they did slowly work through their issues. I also admire Huntley Fitzpatrick for her sex positive themes in her books. Her teenage characters are sexually active and they have no shame, which is always refreshing when it comes to YA. I had two issues with What I Thought Was True though. Firstly, the narration when it comes to the big event that occurred between Gwen and Cass wasn't completely revealed until the last few chapters and it took away from the overall narrative of the book. Secondly, there's an issue that blew up in the second half of the book towards the end that didn't work for me because I didn't particularly care for one character that was involved and also because the other character who I loved didn't deserve to be treated in that way.

Regardless of the issues I had with What I Thought Was True, I still thought it was a strong novel with strong themes of family and growing up, at least for me. It's not perfect in any way, but it's well worth the read.

Rating 

Cover : 4/5
Plot : 3/5
Characters : 4/5
Writing : 4/5

**Overall rating : 3.5/5**