Review: Until We Meet Again

Until We Meet Again

By Renee Collins

Published: November 3, 2015

Country clubs and garden parties. The last thing Cassandra wants is to spend the summer before her senior year marooned in a snooty Massachusetts shore town. Cass craves drama and adventure, which is hard when she just feels stuck.

But when a dreamy stranger shows up on her family's private beach, claiming that it is his property-and that the year is 1925-Cass is swept into a mystery a hundred years in the making. As she searches for answers in the present, Cass discovers a truth that thrusts Lawrence's life into jeopardy. It won't matter which century he is from if he won't live to see tomorrow.

Desperate to save the boy who's come to mean everything to her, Cassandra must find a way to change history...or risk losing Lawrence forever.

My review:

I love time travel/time slip romance novels like Outlander and The Winter Sea and while this is a teen novel I was drawn to pick it up because of the time travel storyline.

Initially I found Cass to be annoying. She is pretty whiny at the beginning of the book and sulks around like a petulant child because her mother and stepfather are forcing her to spend the summer with them at a beach house. Once she meets Lawrence however, things start to change for the better. On the night of a party her parents are hosting, Cass escapes to the beach where she runs into Lawrence only he insists that the beach house is his uncle's and that she is trespassing on his family's land. They don't exactly hit it off at first but she sees him again on the beach and they figure out the truth. He is from 1925 and somehow their lives and timelines are connected by the beach. When something strange happens in her time line, Cass realizes that by meeting Lawrence, they have changed the future. Could it also have endangered Lawrence's life?

Lawrence is fascinated by Cass, a girl unlike the boring society beauties his family pushes him towards. He doesn't have much choice in his life. His family is wealthy and they expect him to follow his father's footsteps to Harvard and then a career in law but Lawrence wants to write poetry. Cass inspires him to be true to himself.  Their romance happens pretty quickly but the story line kind of works that way. 

Cass becomes a nicer person as she spends more time with Lawrence but she has to sneak around to see him, telling her family that she has taken up running on the beach. Her parents are kind people and her relationship with her little brother (what we see of it anyway) is sweet. Lawrence's family is not as nice as his uncle Ned (whom he is staying with for the summer) is a bossy and status-obsessed businessman. There are also a couple of other secondary characters that aren't that well developed like Fay, Lawrence's would-be 1925 love interest and Brandon, the annoying boy interested in Cass.

The time travel setup works with some suspension of disbelief. The phenomena that allows Lawrence and Cass's worlds to intersect is explained a little bit at the end. Overall I liked this novel though it definitely has some flaws. While Cass could have been a more likable protagonist than she was and I would have liked more character development I thought the story was entertaining and the writing had this sweet, almost wistful quality to it at times. The mystery element and trying to figure out what would happen kept me turning the pages. I think readers who like that concept of star-crossed love across time might like this one.


Note I received an ARC for review purposes courtesy of the publisher and Edelweiss