Since You've Been Gone by Tari Faris // Revell Reads Review

This title gets a Kelly Clarkson song in my head :) I discovered this series in the latest Revell review opportunity email and it was book three, so the first order of business was that I had to see if the library had books one and two. They did, so I signed up to review this one. I don't usually leave a review for the last book in a series without having reviews for the rest, so let me tell you a bit about my thoughts on the series so far.

This trilogy (that also has two novellas) is set in a fictional small town on the west coast of Michigan, which is basically my favorite place ever! I have rarely read books set in my state and I love it when I do. Plus, Faris threw in fun things like mentioning the Tigers and calling the Yankees the "bad guys" and nodding to our insanely quirky weather. I loved the setting and the characters. They were ones you could connect with and the stories were all very character-driven, which I think is probably my favorite kind of story. Okay, but onto my review of this book! 

My Review

I can't be the only person who appreciates seeing characters work out things that I deal with in my own life. Somehow seeing it in fiction helps clarify real life. Very rarely are they actually going through what I am, but the underlying thoughts are often the same or very similar.

My thoughts on this book are fairly random and disjointed but here are a few things that stood out to me...
 - Leah is such an awesome character. I wish I could be as cool as her :)
 - The Otis mystery is solved and not at all what I was expecting! I didn't spend much time guessing but I never would have guessed that!
 - I was not expecting Madison to come back but it was actually really good.
 
I think the biggest thing I noticed was the themes of unconditional love and pursuing love. You kind of had that in the other books (I'm mostly thinking of Olivia) but it was much more obvious here. Our characters had past mistakes and hurts that led to them running or pushing away anyone who wanted to be close and love them, but their friends and family wouldn't give up and just kept offering love no matter what. It was very sweet.

This was a nice series and I loved all the uniquely Michigan aspects!!! Now I have to decide if I'm going to spend the money to read the novellas :)

Thanks to Revell and NetGalley for a copy of this book. All opinions are my own and a favorable review was not required.