Until We Meet Again - Renee Collins

Until We Meet Again by Renee Collins
Published on November 3, 2015 by Sourcebooks Fire

They exist in two different centuries, but their love defies time.

Cassandra craves drama and adventure, so the last thing she wants is to spend her summer marooned with her mother and stepfather in a snooty Massachusetts shore town. But when a dreamy stranger shows up on their private beach claiming it's his own—and that the year is 1925—she is swept into a mystery a hundred years in the making.

As she searches for answers in the present, Cassandra discovers a truth that puts their growing love—and Lawrence's life—into jeopardy. Desperate to save him, Cassandra must find a way to change history…or risk losing Lawrence forever.

Until We Meet Again wasn't in my radar until some glowing early reviews started to appear, reading the synopsis I was more than intrigued by it a romance with time travel AND a mystery, hell yeah sign me up. Unfortunately, this was one of those cases of it's not you, it's me books.

The thing that most worked for me was the writing, despite I knowing very early on that this would probably not be a me book I still kept reading and never really felt an urge to DNF it. The pacing of the story also worked really well, we have a murder mystery and a romance to be developed and Collins manages to gives us enough information so to keep us interested on the story and eager to get to the ending to figure everything out.

We have two POV's, Cassandra's (which is the main one) and Lawrence's (usually really short and occasional). Cassandra is a typical angst teenager until she sees a stranger on the beach (Lawrence), them her life gains a purpose (with the mystery to solve) and I just can't, using romance as character development just isn't enough, she supposedly was so many depth to Lawrence because she is "different" and I didn't get, was she different because she was bored? And Lawrence, wow that boy was overdone on the perfect boyfriend machine, he comes from a rich family but isn't a snob and doesn't want to follow his father footsteps, oh no he wants to be a poet! And guess who his muse is? That's right, Cassandra! Maybe this sounds like a perfect romance to you, and it was quite nice but that is it, it was nice and fluffy and extremely cheese - so much that sometimes I thought I would be sick. The secondary characters were just really black or white, if someone was bad (we have some mob and really bad guys here) you could see from a mile afar.

The way everything happened in this story also made me question either this was really an YA book, because everything was so... Childish and predictable. There was things, like the last few chapters, that I think were supposed to be life or death, heart pounding scenes that ended up just reading like a dramatic telenovela (well, I think all telenovelas are dramatic).

Overall this wasn't a bad book, I think it can be perfect to some people and/or depending on your humor, for me this was a disappointment - I think the story could have worked a little bit more on bringing more flawed characters and realistic scenes so that this would have felt more like a story being told and not just a entertainment read.