Where I Belong Book 14

"A heartwarming and witty debut novel about a spoiled city girl whose life is turned upside down when her father loses his job and she's shipped to Broken Spoke, Texas. Who knew country-living could melt this snobby ice-queen's heart?"

The blurb above is from goodreads. It's not what the back of the book says, but I think it's a better description. The back of the book mentions the total hottie Corrine meets at work and I went into this expecting a romance. It's not really, although there is romance in it. This book isn't what I expected, and at the bookstore I wasn't even sure I would like it, but it's about a NY girl stuck in TX, and I'm a TX girl stuck in WI, so I thought if I can't eat a decent burrito might as well read about it.

I'm glad I did. I really enjoyed this book. The first thing I noticed right off the back was the voice. It had a really strong voice that started immediately on page 1 and carried the story all the way through. I also enjoyed the Corrine's character transformation. The upper east sider forced to move to nowhere Texas really transformed from the beginning of the book to the end. She meets new people, and some of them are quite interesting even though she doesn't think so at first. My favorite character was probably Bubby who is interested in Corrine but does not become her love interest for quite some time. He's the quarterback, but he's an all around nice guy and smart. (I haven't met many genuinely nice quarter backs, but I like how the author was able to avoid the stereotype). (Disclaimer: previous statement was not a diss on quarterbacks. Merely, the sum of my personal experience). However,  I didn't like that the entire state of Texas was constantly judged based on this one small town. The book made all of Texas out to be vast farmland and there is a lot of it, but Dallas is huge. Famous landmarks aside, there isn't  much you can do in New York that you can't do in Dallas. And I felt there was lack of fact checking as the Corrine and her little brother were able to eat inside at Sonic. Umm...how?

As much as I loved watching Corrine interact with the other characters and seeing her change, I didn't really care for the end. Everything came together too quickly for it to seem realistic and last scene with Bubby and Corrine felt too open. If there had been an epilogue, I probably would have been more okay with this. The theme was tied up nicely, but I'm still kind of hoping for a sequel to finsih things with Bubby. This was a strong story with a great voice, but based on some craft issues and the ending I'm giving it 3 stars.