Review: Nobody But Us by Kristin Halbrook

Title: Nobody But Us

Author: Kristin Halbrook

Publisher: HarperTeen

Publication Date: 1.29.2013

Pages: 272

Genre: Contemporary

Series: No

Source: eARC from publisher

Rating: A+

Summary (from Goodreads):

Bonnie and Clyde meets IF I STAY in this addictively heart-wrenching story of two desperate teenagers on the run from their pasts.

They’re young. They’re in love. They’re on the run.

Zoe wants to save Will as much as Will wants to save Zoe. When Will turns eighteen, they decide to run away together. But they never expected their escape to be so fraught with danger....

When the whole world is after you, sometimes it seems like you can’t run fast enough.

Nobody But Us, told in alternating perspectives from Will and Zoe, is an unflinching novel, in turns heartbreaking and hopeful, about survival, choices, and love...and how having love doesn’t always mean that you get a happy ending.

Review:

It’s always hard starting a book that you know will smash your heart, and that’s exactly what happened when I started reading Nobody But Us by Kristin Halbrook. It’s one of those books that you just know can’t end well, but it’s written in such a clear, poetic way, that you can’t stop reading for anything.

Will and Zoe are broken people. There’s just no other word for it. Will has been failed by nearly every adult in his life. He’s been bounced from home to home, a product of just how all-too-frequently our society fails older kids in the foster system. He is volatile and unpredictable, but he has this love of Zoe that is overwhelming. The sheer sensitivity of Will astounded me, especially when it came to Zoe.

Zoe, who has been beaten down and abused for most of her life by her only living parent. I desperately wanted Zoe away from her dad—possibly as badly as Will did. The man was a monster, and I cheered when they ran away together … Until I realized Zoe is 15 and Will is 18 and their being together is a crime. But that is just the first in a long series of decisions and obstacles that threatened to undo them.

This book really raises the question: Can you love someone too much? Will and Zoe clung to each other and understood one another in a way few people ever do, but it was to the point of destruction. There were so many points in the journey where things could have gone a little different and ended beautifully, but bad luck and desperation-fueled choices put them on a collision course with reality.

I finished reading Nobody But Us yesterday on the bus coming home from NYC with friends. I still had another 2 hours to kill before we got home, but I couldn’t bring myself to start a new book. This book haunted me much more than I ever imagined. No, I did not get the ending I so desperately wanted, but I think that’s the point. This book made me think and feel long after I stopped reading. I selfishly wanted to hurl this book (well, metaphorically speaking as it was on my Nook and I didn’t feel like going through the financial hassle of replacing that) and pout that I didn’t get my fairy tale ending.

But this isn’t that book.

If you want a happily ever after, then sadly you probably will not enjoy this. However, I think you do yourself a huge disservice by not reading Nobody But Us. Holbrook created this masterpiece of a novel that left me wondering and troubled long after it was over. And really, can you ask for anything more spectacular in a novel?

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