Eight weeks after sixteen-year-old Andie Hamilton gives her virginity to her best friend, “the stick” says she’s pregnant.
Her friends treat her like she’s carrying the plague, her classmates torture and ridicule her, and the boy she thought loved her doesn’t even care. Afraid to experience the next seven months alone, she turns to her ex-boyfriend, Neil Donaghue, a dark-haired, blue-eyed player. With him, she finds comfort and the support she desperately needs to make the hardest decision of her life: whether or not to keep the baby.
Then a tragic accident leads Andie to discover Neil’s keeping a secret that could dramatically alter their lives, and she’s forced to make a choice. But after hearing her son’s heartbeat for the first time, she doesn’t know how she’ll ever be able to let go.
HEY!!! I read this book as a buddy read with Cátia @The Girl Who Read Too Much and Kat @Life and Other Disasters. You can check out Kat’s review of this book here, while go to Cátia’s blog on the next few days to read her thoughts on it.
Every once in awhile, I read a contemporary that really sticks with me and surprises me in the most amazing way. This was one of those books. I have to admit that I was a little reticent at first, because I thought that moral values and church would have a more prominent role in the storyline that they ended up having, and that was a damn good thing. This book also ended up being about a lot more than a teen pregnancy and what should she do about the baby. The book emcompasses her intire journey, with everything in her live coming into play. It deals with adoption, teen pregnancy, how to have a relationship in the condition, the role of friends and family. The most important thing is that blood does not mean family, and that is showcased several times during this book. In a way, this book reminded me a bit of Anything You Want, but the characters are utterly different.
The book is told from Andie’s POV, and it’s narrated almost like a movie voice over at times… I liked it! I will definitly want to check more books by Tori Rigby, because I really enjoyed the style of writing. The pacing was also very well balanced. It’s kind of natural for books about pregnancy to focus a lot on the first half of it and skim the second half, but Because I Love You maintained a very good balance.
The characters are a bit tricky… with that said, I really liked Andie, even though she sometimes was a crybaby and all, but hey, she’s 16 and carrying a baby, so she has every right to cry as much as she likes. She grows a lot during the book, and learns to trust the right people and her own emotions. You know from the blurb that Andie’s two best friends will abandon her as soon as she finds out she’s pregnant, but not only do they do that, but they also turn against her, and one of them is the baby’s dad… that got me super mad! But she does find two amazing people who more than make up for her sorry excuse of friends. Neil and Jill become her support system, with Neil becoming way more than that. And Jill is just awesome!
I loved the romance between Neil and Andie, it was perfect! Neil is an amazing guy, and the more he lets Andie into his life and heart, the more we get to see how perfect he is for her. He deals with her pregnancy like a true friend ought to. He’s supportive and he loves her unconditionally. I loved how patient she was with her, and how he always gave her time and space to decide things for herself, while still being there to support her.
Some people really surprised me in a good way in this book, and I was shocked by some twists and turns that Because I Love You took. I DID NOT SEE IT COMING!
This book turned out to be an emotional ride, and it got me laughing and crying and screaming at my phone, while loving every second of it. While some things could be predicted, I liked how they were handled, and that not everything was a huge deal. I loved how the end of the book is not their end, if that makes any sense. Well done!
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