Emmy & Oliver, by Robin Fenway, was a sweet love story about two kids, Emmy and Oliver, who grew up together but were separated when Oliver’s dad stole him from school grounds as an elementary school kid. Emmy didn’t see Oliver for ten years, and then, suddenly, he came back.
The premise of this novel was intriguing. That Oliver’s father could have gotten away with taking his son and hiding him for ten years was a little disturbing and yet made the book that much sweeter, because during all that time, Emmy had never stopped loving Oliver. Now they’re in high school, and Oliver is back, and he has to get used to interacting with the best friends he had forgotten in the decade he was gone from them. He has to adjust to his mother’s new family. He has to get to know Emmy all over again.
There was so much tension in this novel, because while Oliver is adjusting, everyone else remembers him. Their town was never the same after he was taken, so how could they forget? All the kids’ parents cracked down on their safety. Emmy’s parents became practically glued to her hip. They don’t even want her to go off to college because they want to keep her in their sights.
Emmy, though, wants to be in charge of her own life and has some secrets she’s been keeping from her parents.
Added to that was also the tension of Emmy’s love and Oliver’s confusion. While she loved him all those years he was gone, he seems to have forgotten the connection they’d had when they were in elementary school. This makes her feel a bit foolish.
Throughout the book, Benway strategically placed some flashbacks that told the story of when Emmy and Oliver met and also what their relationship was like as children. I found the flashbacks a masterful contribution to the sweet emotion of the book.
I loved everything about this story. There was so much emotion, so much teenage angst, so much tension between teens and their parents, and yet, it was refreshing that the teenagers had mostly good relationships with their parents. But most of all I loved the relationship between Emmy and Oliver. It endured through all the waiting and hoping, even when everyone in Emmy’s town thought Oliver would never be found. Still she loved him.
Here’s a quote that shows the constant tension between Emmy and Oliver and the love they’re trying to remember:
“The more you start to love someone, the more you ache when they’re gone, and maybe it’s that middle ground that hurts the most, when you can see them and still not feel like you’re near enough.”
A Night Divided, by Jennifer Nielson, was a historical young adult novel set during the time of the Berlin Wall’s construction. Greta and her brother, Fritz, along with their mom, are stuck in East Germany, with their father and younger brother in West Germany, because the Berlin Wall went up seemingly overnight. One day, on the way to school, Gerta sees her father on the other side of the wall. She’s not allowed to look at the wall for all that long, or the secret police will tag her as a traitor. And traitors could be killed. But it seems that her father wants to tell her something.
It takes Gerta a while to figure out what he wants to say, but she and her brother embark on a mission to escape from East Germany, even while neighbors and friends are turning names over to the secret police and people are being killed for their attempted escapes. Nothing deters them. Not only do they want to escape East Germany, but they are driven by their desperation to reunite with the rest of their family.
A Night Divided contained a lot of tension as well because it dealt with a wall dividing a country. What I loved most about the book was that it was based on a historical event and contained quite a bit of fact about the Berlin Wall and the situations that cropped up because of it. Nielson did a great job highlighting a part of our history and bringing it to life for young adults.
I love this description of Gerta’s family after the wall goes up:
“Our family was like a house of cards in a stiff wind. And when it became too much to feel the pain of our collapse, all I could do was become angry.”
And here was one of my favorite quotes that shows the history contained in the novel:
“I wanted books that weren’t censored. I wanted to see places that were now only pictures in the smuggled magazines that had passed though my hands. Places like the canals of Venice, or the beaches in the South of France, or maybe even one day the Statue of Liberty in the United States.
“I wanted a home without hidden microphones, and fiends and neighbors I could talk to without wondering gif they would repot me to the secret police.
“And I wanted control over my own life, the chance to succeed. Maybe I would fail, but if I did, it shouldn’t be because some Stasi official holding my file had made that decision for me.”
Both of these books were fantastic, entertaining reads that will stick with you for a long time.
I hope you enjoyed these book recommendations. Be sure to pick up a free book from my starter library and visit my recommends page to see some of my favorite books. If you have any books you recently read that you think I’d enjoy, contact me. I always enjoy adding to my list. Even if I never get through it all.
