Review: Waiting For You by Shey Stahl

I saw some pretty intensely positive reviews for Waiting For You and so I decided to give it a try. It’s a coming of age tale where a dark and dangerous boy falls in love with the seemingly perfect girl next door.

Bailey has a perfectly planned out life. She’s the top of her class, has the perfect boyfriend and a future laid out by her parents. At graduation, she’s set to deliver the generic valedictorian speech to her peers about investing in their future and following their dreams when something just clicks. Bailey realizes that she doesn’t want the cookie-cutter life her parents forced down her throat and so she does something no one expects her to do: she gets in the car with the bad boy in town, her childhood best friend, and goes on an adventure across the country to find herself.

To be honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of Waiting for You. I had a lot of problems with this story, but the main issue was the pacing. The story felt like the longest book I’ve ever read. I kept thinking to myself, “Another trip? More people to meet? Another fight?!” I checked and this isn’t even close to the longest romance I’ve read all year....it just felt like it. The plot was choppy and it made it hard for me to keep my full interest locked in on the book.

The characters were not my favorite either. Bailey and Dylan are two whiny teenager who have real problems, but choose to run away together to enter into a destructive relationship. Now this could be the mid-twenties in me talking, but I was more annoyed than enamored with the couple. Man up! Deal with your issues and your family and if you’re not going to, at least make me believe in your adventurous bad decision making tirade. The pair weren’t very likeable making it hard to cheer on their runaway train wreck.

Then there was the immature fighting. They fought, they made up, he got angry, she got angry, he thought she cheated, he got angry again. So. Much. Drama. And not in a good way. I love a story with some twists and turns but the immature bickering had me wanting to pull out my hair and punch the two of them in the face.

Overall, I thought Waiting For You drug on way too long and the two love interests were not easy to like. I’ve read a similar story called The Edge of Never and it was done so much better. The runaway adventure was believable, the characters were touching and heart-stoppingly sweet and the overall message left you in a melted puddle of happiness on the floor. This one wasn’t for me guys.

2 out of 10

Happy Reading :)