When You Were Mine, Rebecca Serle

On the theme of rumored teen movies, I downloaded this book to my kindle the day it was available. I was really put off by the first words of the book in the prologue:

"Shakespeare got it wrong. His most famous work, and he completely missed the mark. You know the one I'm talking about. Star-crossed lovers. Ill-fated romance. Torn apart by family and circumstance... What if the greatest love story ever told was the wrong one?"

UNGH. ANGST. MISUNDERSTANDING. THE MOST OVERUSED PLAY EVARRRRRRRR.

And the rest of the book was kind of that way, too.

Rosaline (Rose) Caplet is best friends with Rob Monteg, who lives next door. As Senior year of high school begins, it looks like their life-long friendship is finally going to go to the next level... until Rose's cousin Juliet moves back to town with her parents - who are still upset about a decade-old incident which kept the cousins apart. Now Rob's only got eyes for Juliet, and all of the drama surrounding her might be too much for everyone to handle. Rose, especially, needs to let go of the feelings she just found for Rob in order to give due attention to the MLD (Mysterious Loner Dude), Len.

Besides being just a little too trite for my tastes, I did like what Len, and Rose's best friend Charlie had to say about caring for yourself and letting go, and Rose's insights into free will and destiny pervading the novel sometimes were more insightful than annoying:

That's the thing about free will: Every decision we make is a choice against something as much as it is for something else.

And the occasional wise words about feuds and forgiveness from Rose and Juliet. In particular, this one stood out to me when Rose tries to comfort Juliet at a horribly awkward family dinner:

Being impartial doesn't make you innocent,

Overall, I was annoyed by Rose - she was not a heroine worth fighting for, and she put up little to no resistance to the events around her for most of the book. I'm sure that was the lesson she had to learn, but her being unhappy for 4/5 of the book made it pretty hard to read. Plus - can we please be done with Romeo and Juliet for awhile? Please?

Read Romeo's Ex instead. That's the one that should have been optioned for film rights.

When You Were Mine

• Paperback
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Childrens Books (April 26, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0857075160
• ISBN-13: 978-0857075161