The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith

Summary: Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they're rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father.

Lucy and Owen's relationship plays out across the globe as they stay in touch through postcards, occasional e-mails, and -- finally -- a reunion in the city where they first met.

A carefully charted map of a long-distance relationship, Jennifer E. Smith's new novel shows that the center of the world isn't necessarily a place. It can be a person, too.

Review: So... am I getting old? Because while the story in this novel is cute, I feel like I'm not quite as charmed by it as I should have been.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm a fully grown adult. Or the many times I moved away from friends (and boyfriends) during my own adolescence. But I kind of want to give Lucy and Owen a talking to. One that boils down to "get over it, my young friends."

Does that make me old?

I'm a little preoccupied with the question.

Anyway, despite their weird kind-of-relationship thing, I liked the book. I liked Owen and his dad's (heartbreaking) story; their journey towards healing from Owen's mom's death was strong storytelling. And I liked Lucy's story and how her relationship with her parents plays out. (Although stories that end with "if you'd only asked, I would have..." tend to break my heart a little bit.)

Overall, once I got over the way their relationship makes me want to yell at some kids and tell them to get off my lawn, I rather liked it.

Goodreads Shelves: bechdel-test, fluffy, is-this-a-kissing-book, my-kind-of-woman, pretentious

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