Review: The Truth About Jack by Jody Gehrman

Dakota McCloud has just been accepted into a prestigious art school. Soon she'll leave behind the artists' colony where she grew up―hippie dad, tofu since birth, yurt―and join her boyfriend and best friend on the East Coast. It was the plan…until Dakota finds out her boyfriend and best friend hooked up behind her back.

Hurt and viciously betrayed, Dakota pours out her heart on a piece of paper, places it in a bottle, and hurls it into the ocean. But it doesn't quite go where she expects…

Jack Sauvage finds the bottle washed up on the shore and responds to Dakota's letter. Except what if his straight-laced life doesn’t jive with the free-spirited girl he’s only seen from afar? As Jack creates a persona he believes she’ll love, they slowly fall for each other with each new letter. Now Jack is trying to find a way to make this delicate, on-paper romance happen in real life…without revealing his deception.

 

Dakota was left behind by her boyfriend and best friend when they headed off to college. When she receives the news that she has also been accepted, she thinks that her life is right on track. Little does she know that she's going to be thrown a curve ball and her life will seemingly be in shambles. Until she meets Jack, that is. 

When I picked The Truth About Jack up, I was pretty sure I knew what I was getting into ... a feel-good lighthearted romance that would be a simple read. In some ways, that is exactly what I got. It was a very sweet romance novel but it was a little darker than I had imagined. There were a lot of sad things that I hadn't really banked on that surprised me a bit. 

I really enjoyed the journey that Dakota and Jack were on together and apart. I thought that the author did a great job of really tuning into teenagers and it read like I was back in high school. Some of the situations were the same ones that I had been through and it made me a bit nostalgic. 

Another thing made me a bit nostalgic ... The Truth About Jack was a bit ... Message In A Bottle-esque. In more than one way, it reminded me of that book (and movie). Now, I have nothing against repeated ideas that slightly resemble each other ... isn't that what all books are?!? But I just had a stronger sense of it with this one and I'm not completely sure why. It just popped into my head and decided to take up residence while I finished this one.

There are a bunch of surprises that I didn't expect within these pages and that made the story that much better. I do wish that this book was a little deeper. I think that it would have made the story more interesting if some of the topics discussed had really delved into the issue. For the most part, this was a sweet book about coming of age, growing into and out of relationships and falling in love. 

Available: April 14th, 2015

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