“All you get to do when someone loves you is either push them away or accept the love they are willing to give you. If you push them away, you’re knowingly hurting them. If you let them love you, there will still be hurt, but at least then you’ll both have moments of happiness”
– Katie McGarry
Title: Echos Between Us
Author: Katie McGarry
Release Date: January 14, 2020
Publisher: Tor Teen
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 384
Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Teen for an eARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review!
Veronica sees ghosts. More specifically, her mother’s ghost. The afterimages of blinding migraines caused by the brain tumor that keeps her on the fringes and consumes her whole life haunt her, even as she wonders if it’s something more…
Golden boy Sawyer is handsome and popular, a state champion swimmer, but his adrenaline addiction draws him to Veronica.
A girl with nothing to live for and a boy with everything to lose–can they conquer their demons together?
Hauntingly beautiful. This book stuck with me even when I put it down, which I tried not to do often. There were moments were I was genuinely creeped out, goosebumps and all, and had to put it down. It not only questioned Sawyers’ belief in ghosts but my own. McGarry is an instant but for me, so when I saw eARCs available for Echos Between Us I immediately snagged one without reading the synopsis. Going back and reading it after I’ve finished the book makes me glad I didn’t because it’s not a subject I typically enjoy. I’m not a supernatural fan and I like my YA contemporaries to be filled with romance rather than ghosts. This was not the case with Veronica and Sawyers story.
➽ Veronica – the weird girl at school. She celebrates holidays at the wrong time of the year, doesn’t fit the typical mode with her loner friends and supposedly eats Girl Scouts for lunch.
➽ Sawyer – Mr. Popular rich boy who has a ton of friends, is the leader of his group and excels at swimming. His life seems perfect from the outside looking it.
Sawyer moves into the haunted downstairs apartment of Veronica’s house and she gets to see firsthand just how hard his life really is and the facade he has been putting on. Sawyer also gets an inside look at Veronica’s life and sees just how wrong he was about her and why she lives life the way she does. Soon a tenuous friendship with the promise of something more forms between the two as they work on their senior project: proving the other side exists.
A sweet contemporary romance with supernatural elements, Echos Between Us tugs at the heartstrings while also giving you goosebumps. Neither Veronica or Sawyer have it easy, but in drastically different ways. I don’t want to spill too much on Veronica, but I loved how Sawyer’s storyline was handled. He was an adrenaline junky that used dangerous acts of adrenaline to escape his life and responsibilities for a few moments. While there are a ton of self help groups out there available, adrenaline junky help groups like AA isn’t really a thing. AA is though and it was touching to see him taken under another guys wing and show readers how to ask for help. I think that is such an important lesson to take away from this novel. From Veronica I learned to live life to the fullest and the way you want to live it no matter what anyone thinks.
The secondary characters in this books were so important. From Veronica’s dad, to her best friends and Sawyer’s sister and mom. Everyone had their own story and we got to learn it. I’m actually hoping we get to revisit this world someday and maybe get endings to Veronica’s friends stories. I fell in love with Nazareth, Jesse, and Leo. I want to know where their stories go from here and how they end. Plus I’d like to check in on Veronica and Sawyer.
Echos Between Us was so unique to not only McGarry’s other works but anything else I’ve ever read. For moments I too believed in the supernatural like Veronica, got chills and a tad nervous about not things that go bump in the night. If you’re a non-believer like Sawyer you’ll still enjoy this book and his explanations behind residual hauntings and the spirits left behind that haunt us.
Disclaimer: All quotes used in this review are taken from an advanced copy and may be changed from those that appear in the final version. Quotes will be updated to reflect such changes, if any.
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