Release Date - April 21, 2015
Publisher Website - Harper Collins
Publisher Social Media - Twitter/Facebook/SavvyReader/Frenzy
Pages - 293 pages
My Rating - 4/5
**received for an honest review from publisher**
Here is the Goodreads synopsis
Three girls are about to discover the meaning of city love. From bestselling YA romance author Susane Colasanti!Both a love letter to New York City, and that incredible time between highschool and college when anything and everything seems possible, City Love is a sexy, flirty look at growing up and the rush of new experiences. Part Taylor Swift song, part Gossip Girl, and a huge dose of Sex and the City assured that I fell in love with not just this novel, but it's characters and the setting.
Sadie, a born and raised New Yorker, is hopeful and romantic and an eternal optimist who is ready to find her soul mate.
Darcy is a free spirit from SoCal with rebellious tendencies and unlimited financial resources, looking for summer boy adventures.
Rosanna leaves Chicago for NYC with a grand total of seventy-three cents so she can reinvent herself and forget about her past.
Sadie, Darcy, and Rosanna are living together in New York City the summer before their freshman year of college begins. With no parents, no rules, and an entire city to explore, these three girls are on the verge of the best summer of their lives. Told from alternating points of view, City Love captures the moments in each girl’s life when everything is thrilling, amazing, and terrifying all at once…in a way it will never be again.
Having never read a Susane Colasanti book before, I wasn't sure what to expect. As someone who has deeply fallen in love with New York the synopsis caught my eye immediately. Susane's strength as a writer is in the storytelling, and while I found her writing easy to read, it was the story that kept me captivated. The writing isn't splashy, but it's the characters and the story that draw you in.
The friendship element of the story is promising, if not fully developed in this instalment. The romance tends to take centre stage, but the friendship that is beginning, adorable rituals included, had me grinning. It's the type of friendship that makes you long for friends like this group of girls. Ones that will go to an all night diner with you and gossip about boys, life and everything else. Ones that will explore a city that is waiting to be discovered.
City Love is a perfect name for the novel because you will be deeply in city love with New York after reading this book. It made me feel the way Sex and the City did about New York. The city ends up becoming a character in the story, and it's one that shines the brightest. It is a city that is filled with potential and promise. What makes it such a compelling, alluring place is captured in these pages, and you'll want to rush to try more than a few hot spots found within. I felt a nostalgia for the city and fell back in love with it as I followed Sadie, Darcy and Rosanna on their journeys through the city that never sleeps.
The romance is the stuff of daydreams and fantasy. Filled with delightful meet cutes, and the kind of dates that are a staple of any good romantic comedy. This element is the core of the novel, and those who enjoy the genre will find much to love. The romances are infused with drama and it would be right at home on the CW network as a television show.
The ending all but ensures that you'll be itching to get your hands on the sequel as it's filled with juicy drama and enough story development to send things into a tailspin. While there a few clichés and convenient moments within the novel, it's all part of the magical moments that make it worthwhile. Those elements only add to it's charms and it offers up vicarious wish fulfilment more than anything else.
