The Love That Split the World | The Book That Split My Head {Review}

Title: The Love That Split the World

Author: Emily Henry

Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction

Published: January 26, 2016 by Razorbill

Natalie Cleary must risk her future and leap blindly into a vast unknown for the chance to build a new world with the boy she loves. 

Natalie’s last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start… until she starts seeing the “wrong things.” They’re just momentary glimpses at first—her front door is red instead of its usual green, there’s a pre-school where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn’t right.

That’s when she gets a visit from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls “Grandmother,” who tells her: “You have three months to save him.” The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it’s as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau.

Emily Henry’s stunning debut novel is Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler’s Wife, and perfectly captures those bittersweet months after high school, when we dream not only of the future, but of all the roads and paths we’ve left untaken. 

    

• The “Grandmother” in this book is basically Grandmother Willow from Pocahontas. And yes, I came to this revelation before I realized the protagonist is half-Native American. Sheesh.
• DIVERSITY BONUS POINTS! Rachel is both half-Native American and adopted. So. Yay!

  

• This book features insta-love at its very worst. As a defender of insta-love, I find this maddeningly disappointing. There’s absolutely no chemistry, it’s simply: You’re attractive and I’m attractive so let’s get together! Ugh. Please.
• Rachel is a plain bean. I felt like the author relied solely on the fact that her MC is diverse in order to make her interesting. Sorry, but that’s not how it works. 
• WHAT IS THE PLOT? It took longer to move than it takes me to get the urge to exercise! Hardly anything happened until the last 50 pages, where everything happened, making it utterly confusing. Basically, the pacing is pathetic.
• I rolled my eyes 465 times. More or less. The author tries to make everything a bigger deal than it is, which is both laughable and irritating. 

  

Nice try, book. But you’re entirely pathetic. Sorry sorry I’m too mean.
What insta-love romances have you found to be terribly done?