Andi's Young Adult Books: Review of No Place Like Here by Christina June #NPLHBT #BlinkYABooks

On Tour with Prism Book Tours

Welcome to another stop on the tour for No Place Like Here by Christina June. I posted an excerpt earlier this tour over at Andi's Book Reviews. After you read my review here, download the book and enter the giveaway below, be sure to check that out, as well as all of the other stops on the tour. Thanks for stopping by!

No Place Like Here

By Christina June
Young Adult Contemporary

Paperback, Audiobook & ebook, 288 Pages
May 21st 2019 by Blink

From Christina June, author of It Started with Goodbye and Everywhere You Want to Be, comes No Place Like Here, a modern twist on Hansel and Gretel.

Ashlyn Zanotti has big plans for the summer. She's just spent a year at boarding school and can't wait to get home. But when Ashlyn's father is arrested for tax evasion and her mother enters a rehab facility for "exhaustion," a.k.a. depression, her life is turned upside down.

The cherry on top? Ashlyn's father sends her to work with a cousin she doesn't even know at a rustic team-building retreat center in the middle of nowhere. A self-proclaimed "indoor girl," not even Ash's habit of leaving breadcrumb quotes--inspirational sayings she scribbles everywhere--can help her cope.

With a dangerously careless camp manager doling out grunt work, an overbearing father trying to control her even from prison, and more than a little boy drama to struggle with, the summer is full of challenges. And Ashlyn must make the toughest decision of her life: keep quiet and follow her dad's marching orders, or find the courage to finally stand up to her father to have any hope of finding her way back home.

Fans looking for stories with elements of drama, romance, friendship, and an unflinching look into navigating and improving even the most difficult parent-teen relationships need look no further.

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**My thoughts**
I do love to read coming-of-age YA novels, so I was intrigued by the blurb to this book. I was also intrigued by the idea of it being related to the tale of Hansel and Gretel. I have to admit that I had a hard time following that parallel, but it has been years since I last read that. But I didn't need the connection to appreciate this book and inhale it in one sitting.

Ashlyn made a mistake in her past choices. She has spent the last year repenting in a way, and I dislike her father a lot for being so hard on her. The more that she reveals about her father's demands for perfection out of her and her mother, the less I like him and the more I feel sorry for her. She's had an easy life, relatively speaking in a financial sense, but has to carry around this burden of that omnipresent voice in her head telling her that her thoughts and actions are inappropriate. She doesn't know how to be true to herself, but you can tell that she wants to discover how to do this.

She also wants to reconnect with her family and her home live after having been sent away to school for the past year. But of course, her father has now been arrested and is going away to prison for a while. Her mother is completely unable to cope and sinks into a deep depression, so she is going away to a rehab facility of sorts to help her through this. Meanwhile, Ashlyn is being shoved off onto her aunt and uncle briefly until she has to start work at a resort that specializes in helping people to learn how to trust and to empower themselves.

As expected, Ashlyn goes through incredible growth and discovers so much about herself and her strengths. She develops incredible leadership skills and forges relationships with some people she may not have otherwise. I love watching her journey and how she grows.

I also love how much she loves words. She memorizes quotations, which she keeps in a quote journal. She has a tendency to write them down all over the place, thus leaving little breadcrumbs of inspiration for others to discover. I found myself even taking note of some of them.

I would also like to give kudos to the author for addressing mental health via Ashlyn's mom and how too often we like to sweep it under the rug and not acknowledge what is really going on.

I need to know where Ashlyn goes from here. And I am going to have to check out the rest of the series to find out more about her and her friends. (But fear not, this book definitely stands on its own.)

I received a complimentary copy in exchange for my honest review.

Other Books by the Author

About the Author

Christina June writes young adult contemporary fiction when she’s not writing college recommendation letters during her day job as a school counselor. She loves the little moments in life that help someone discover who they’re meant to become – whether it’s her students or her characters. Christina is a voracious reader, loves to travel, and hopes to one day be bicoastal – the east coast of the US and the east coast of Scotland. She lives in Virginia with her husband and daughter. She is the author of IT STARTED WITH GOODBYE, EVERYWHERE YOU WANT TO BE, and NO PLACE LIKE HERE.

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