Golden

This is a lovely book! A wonderful weekend read!

'Seventeen-year-old Parker Frost has never taken the road less traveled. Valedictorian and quintessential good girl, she’s about to graduate high school without ever having kissed her crush or broken the rules. So when fate drops a clue in her lap—one that might be the key to unraveling a town mystery—she decides to take a chance.'

It's filled with beautiful imagery, so much emotion, fills your heart with the winds of change and challenges to really live. I especially loved the journal aspect, and the beautiful way it's written. Every chapter starts with a floral illustration, and a line from a poem or a poignant quote. I really liked that. 

The first line I highlighted in the book is this: "Today the wind and I burst through the double doors together, and it carries me like someone who's going places, because now it's official. I am." and the book kind of carries you on a journey with this feeling. It's a book about really living, and enjoying the experiences while you chase your goals. "A life made of beauty and love and chance." It asks the question, "What will you live for? Be passionate about? Define yourself by?" while you read Parker's story, as she reads Julianna's story and tries to live them both out as best she can. 

Julianna writes so beautifully of a boy who 'feels like someone I've always known, but also someone I need to know more' and it changes the way she sees her life and her relationship and, the course of her life in it's entirety. 

I believe that every moment matters and happens for a reason, that you see things in conversations or the corner of your eyes and that one day it all matches up to have a magnificent meaning. And I enjoyed that aspect, but I also enjoyed the way *not really a spoiler* it ends with possibility, no defined answer or 'happily ever after' - though to me, that's the real kind of happily ever after.

I think this would make a great movie adaption, or even tv series. And I'd kind of like a second book, maybe written the way Lola and the Boy Next Door is.. where you see them again but in a different story. Maybe from someone like Orion's perspective, or Hope's thoughts. 

There's a boy who has like Parker for years, Be a miracle. Be alive, and living a beautiful life somewhere new, however impossible it seems.