Review: Salvation by Anne Osterlund

Title: Salvation

Author: Anne Osterlund

Publisher: Penguin Young Readers

Publication Date: 1.10.2013

Pages: 288

Genre: Contemporary

Series: No

Source: ARC from author

Rating: B+

Summary (from Goodreads):

Salvador Resendez--Salva to his friends--appears to have it all. His Mexican immigrant family has high expectations, and Salva intends to fulfill them. He's student body president, quarterback of the football team, and has a near-perfect GPA. Everyone loves him.

Especially Beth Courant, AKA the walking disaster area. Dreamy and shy, Beth is used to blending into the background. But she's also smart, and she has serious plans for her future.

Popular guy and bookish girl--the two have almost nothing in common. Until fate throws them together and the attraction is irresistible. Soon Beth is pushing Salva to set his sights higher than ever--because she knows he has more to offer, more than even he realizes.

Then tragedy strikes--and threatens to destroy everything that Salva has worked for. Will Beth's love be enough to save him?

Review:

I have been so excited about reading Salvation by Anne Osterlund for months! I was so thankful to have gotten this copy to review. I’m a sucker for unlikely romances, and this novel fit the bill nicely.

Honestly, I had somewhat of a hard time connecting with the characters. Maybe too much happened in a short amount of time. It also seemed like there were chunks of time missing in the story—it skipped ahead frequently by a couple of weeks or months. I really feel like if more had been fleshed out by another hundred pages or so to show what happened during that time, I would have been able to get a better handle on Salva and Beth and their romance.

I did enjoy Beth, though, and her love of literature is something I think we can all identify with. I also was proud of the way she pushed Salva not to settle for anything less than the best. Yes, this girl was a disorganized mess (much like me in high school), but she was passionate about her beliefs and was a loyal friend.

I also loved the emphasis of Salva’s heritage that Osterlund infused into the story. The snippets of Spanish (and Spanglish) made me smile. Maybe because I have a fairly good handle on the language, but I love reading it in novels. Also the family dynamic in the Resendez family fascinated me—seeing how Salva’s dad pushed their children to be educated and the emphasis he put on that to the devoutly Catholic mindset not just in the Resendez clan, but in their community was enlightening.

Salvation is a fast, sweet read. I finished it in a few hours on a lazy Sunday morning. It’s definitely worth reading and checking out!

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