Oh, silly teenagers, you are so dumb. I get it, I was a dumb teenager once. I thought that my stretchy elastic-waist pants made me look okay and my Beanie Baby collection would bring me popularity. I was not cool, if that had to be clarified at all.
In Nobody But Us, we have two dumb teenagers. Both are damaged in their own way. Will is a foster kid who has just turned 18. He is running away with his underage girlfriend, Zoe, who is a victim of her father's alcoholism and temper. They have big plans for the future, to go to Las Vegas and have Zoe go to college and be a nurse. They have plans to stay together forever.
It's sort of sweet, their naivete and their love for each other. Then the pitfalls come. Will stole some money in order to fund their new life. They end up committing a couple crimes along the way, not to mention the fact that Will is basically kidnapping his girlfriend. There is absolutely no way that this will end well.
I almost would have preferred for this to have been about two teenagers deliberately going on a crime spree. Zoe and Will are kind of sweet, but they are also so young and inexperienced. If their plans had worked out, you can easily imagine them ending in a divorce, her stuck with their five children. That or they would have been some of those scary people on Jerry Springer. In spite of the obvious facts, Zoe and Will seemed like good kids. Deep down in the very squishiest depths of my heart, I kind of wished that they could have their happy ending. I admit that the book moved me to tears a couple times, but it used very cheap tactics for that. Not cool, book. I might have been more moved if I had been an actual teenager, more able to buy into this obviously doomed relationship. Alas, I am far too jaded and the story ended up only so-so for me.
I received my copy of Nobody But Us from Edelweiss, courtesy of HarperTeen. It's available for purchase now.
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