My Week in Book Review: The Map from Here to There

The Map from Here to There by Emery Lord

It's senior year, and Paige Hancock is finally living her best life. She has a fun summer job, great friends, and a super charming boyfriend who totally gets her. But senior year also means big decisions. Weighing "the rest of her life," Paige feels her anxiety begin to pervade every decision she makes. Everything is exactly how she always wanted it to be--how can she leave it all behind next year? In her head, she knows there is so much more to experience after high school. But in her heart, is it so terrible to want everything to stay the same forever?

Loved this book. A lot. I should say first that this is a sequel: the first book, The Start of Me and You, is also great. I read it a few years ago and now, after placing a hold back in April, finally got my hands on the follow up.

So, rom-coms are great, but what happens after the dramatic “run after someone in the rain” scene? When it’s back to normal life and growing up decisions and personalities that don’t always jive perfectly? That’s what we’re dealing with here. In the last book, Paige found her dream guy, but now that all her friends are making jokes about them as the cute old married couple, she feels the pressure to make the relationship forever—and she’s only 17. Couple that with Paige’s anxiety, not just about her relationship, but about which college to go to, her divorced parents’ re-blooming relationship, how to juggle competing priorities, and boom! You get instant tension that ticks like a bomb ready to detonate. Which, of course, it does. Because this is a novel, and that’s how novels roll.

I really enjoyed the thorough exploration of Paige’s anxiety. Emery Lord manages to give us a dive into the head of someone who’s constantly worrying without making her come across as a wet blanket. We know the things Paige is doing and thinking aren’t necessarily logical, but we get why she feels like they are. It feels to me (as one not having experienced anxiety but knowing many people who do), like a good window into that experience. Paige summed it up on page 65 with this thought: “Why did people keep telling me to stop worrying, like it was a light I chose to keep on, a bulb burning at all hours? By what instant magic, honestly, could I rewire my core self?”

I also love dream boy’s portrayal (purposely not mentioning name if you haven’t heard the first book). He’s a great guy, but he’s not perfect, and his issues cause problems as much as Paige’s do. He feels like a very real person, the kind I might meet and hang out with.

One small complaint I have about this book is that there are a LOT of side characters. Paige and boy have a big friend group from book 1 that only grows in book 2, and even though some of them (Paige’s girl gang) were all distinct, others faded into each other and I couldn’t keep track of how we knew them. But aside from that, this is a fun, wonderful follow up to the first book, and I highly recommend both!