When the Stars Lead to You by Ronni Davis

Content Tags: Depression, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide, Racism, Stress, Cute Puppies, Sex

Description from Storygraph:

Nicola Yoon meets Jenny Han in a heated first-love romance about two teens who are torn apart one summer by prejudice and mental illness, and find each other once again. Eighteen-year-old Devon longs for two things. The stars and the boy she fell in love with last summer. When Ashton breaks Devon's heart at the end of the most romantic summer ever, she thinks her heart will never heal again. But over the course of the following year, Devon finds herself slowly putting the broken pieces back together. Now it's senior year and she's determined to enjoy every moment of it, as she prepares for a future studying galaxies. That is, until Ashton shows up on the first day of school. Can she forgive and open her heart to him again? Or are they doomed to repeat history? From debut author, Ronni Davis, comes a stunning novel about passion, loss, and the power of first love.

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Overall, I didn't hate this book. I didn't love it either. Reading it was easy and I felt compelled to keep reading it, but I really wanted more. The story is told from the perspective of Devon and I think it could've been stronger if told from Ashton's perspective instead. The main focus of the book is the struggle in Devon and Ashton's relationship because of Ashton's severe depression and the impact that had on Devon's life and schooling. That aspect and the details included made it feel strange to me that there was such an emphasis on how difficult it made her life rather than how difficult it is to be the person struggling with mental illness.

Beyond that theme of the book, there were quite a few moments (and even some characters) in the book that seemed to serve no purpose to the plot of the book. It's not totally unexpected for things like that in a debut novel, so it wasn't entirely off-putting. Though, if those moments (or characters) had been removed there would've been more time and space to develop the main story and focal characters further.

In reading this, I wanted to know what was going to happen, yet when I got to the end I felt kind of... meh. The conclusion felt a bit lackluster to me and I really wanted something more or different than a somewhat neat wrap-up after everything that went on in the book. I wouldn't discourage people from reading it, though I may warn people that it has its flaws.

Some wrap up questions:

If you could ask the author anything, what would it be?

Why, as someone who struggles with mental illness, did you decide to focus on the impact it has on others (and blame the person with mental illness a lot) rather than focus on the character struggling and try to humanize and normalize that struggle more?

How does the book's title work in relation to the book's contents?

There were quite a few details that felt inconsequential and the stars bit was one aspect. The stars reference in the title is clearly a nod to Devon being interested in astrophysics, but... the stars didn't really lead to Ashton. They didn't meet because of the stars and other than her studying astrology and liking stars, the stars weren't a major factor in their relationship. I don't hate the title, but think it could've been more relevant to what actually happened in the book.