Through To You

If you knew something was a bad idea, would you still do it?  That's exactly the story behind Lauren Barnholdt's Through to You.  This fast-paced read is action-packed with a variety of teenage drama, confusion and angst that will take you back.

Summary Courtesy of Goodreads:

Opposites attract—and then complicate—in this romantic, relatable novel from the author of Two-way Street and Sometimes It Happens.

It starts with a scribbled note in class: I like your sparkle. Harper had casually threaded a piece of blue and silver tinsel through her ponytail in honor of school spirit day. And that carefree, corny gesture is what grabs Penn Mattingly’s eye. Penn—resident heartbreaker of the senior class. Reliably unreliable. Trouble with a capital “T.” And okay, smolderingly sexy.

Harper’s surprised by Penn’s attention—and so is Penn. The last thing he needs is a girlfriend. Or even a friend-with-benefits. The note is not supposed to lead to anything.
Oh, but it does. They hang out. They have fun. They talk. They make out. And after a while, it seems like they just click. But Penn and Harper have very different ideas about what relationships look like, in no small part because of their very different family backgrounds. Of course they could talk about these differences—if Penn knew how to talk about feelings.

Harper and Penn understand their attraction is illogical, yet something keeps pulling them together. It’s like a crazy roller coaster—exhilarating, terrifying, and amazing all at once. And neither knows how to stop the ride…

I have to be honest and say that I had a love/hate relationship with Through to You.  One on hand I really loved the dual point of view between Harper and Penn.  It was so dynamic and really helped the pacing of the novel (even if the relationship seemed to move quite fast IMHO).  I always love getting both POV esp when it's the male/female viewpoint.  

On the other hand the plot seemed fairly predictable.  Good naive girl is enamored with resident bad boy and falls hard.  He of course, has a reputation and a past and needs to get over himself.  They build up and things start to go well but then they fight blow up and need to come to terms with their life and get their act together to hopefully have a happily ever after... beyond that the biggest thing I seemed to have an issue with was throughout the last half of the book I kept wondering, what is Harper doing?  Why is she putting up with this?  And wow, talk about anger issues...Penn needs some serious concealing.  Yikes!  I get his story is filled with bad lemons and his deck is stacked against him (he could have a whole novel himself), but seriously...talk about a bad boy with some serious issues! 

All in all though, I did enjoy the read.  Through to You was fast paced and and I believe, really captured the frantic teen emotions in this coming of age story.