Though I wouldn’t say Sara Shepard is the best author, I’ve definitely read and enjoyed a few of her books. They can be a little ridiculous, but they’re generally easy reads. Wait For Me is a different type of story for Shepard. It is a reincarnation story, so I was definitely intrigued.
Thank you to Union Square and Co for allowing me to read this early through NetGalley. This was a quick read and the perfect break with all the fantasy I’ve been reading recently.
Casey Rhodes has many disguises, but as a 17-year-old sophomore in college and girlfriend of a highly eligible bachelor? She has to. So when she starts hearing voices, she runs to the seaside town of Avon, hoping to rest and reset without worrying anyone. But as the voices get worse, she starts to think she recognises people there, including Jake. They’ve never met before, but she swears there’s a connection, and he thinks so too. Casey and Jake decide to look into her memories together and to find out whose memories she actually has.
I’ll be honest… I didn’t actually like this book as much as I’d hoped. As interesting as the idea was, I didn’t really care all that much for the characters. I felt for Casey, she had some sucky things in her life, but it didn’t really feel like I got to know her. She likes writing, is very clever and apart from a few other random facts…that’s about it. Maybe in part, it’s tied to the fact she’s a reincarnation. But I didn’t feel like I knew Becky or any other characters either. Everything felt kind of surface-level.
And that, in turn, meant that the twists weren’t as shocking as they should’ve been either.
Were they interesting? Kind of? Not sure how I feel about the use of DiD in this. That’s rarely used well in media, but again, we see so little of it so maybe it doesn’t matter. But I expect it would to people who actually have it. The book did lose even more points there. Though the twists were enough for me to go oh? It was more like oh, that’s dumb, than oh, I wanna know more.
The writing itself was decent. It was what you expect from Shepard, and it was easy to read. I can see big fans of her loving this as it is filled with drama and intrigue. I just didn’t really like how she went down the reincarnation route. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but sadly it didn’t work for me.
I will say that there was something that I appreciated, and that was actually the attitude towards romance. With the drama in these sorts of books, you expect betrayal or hurt and everything along those lines. But the characters in this book all actually cared for each other. When the girls moved on to different boys, the boys they were with understood. They just wanted them to be happy, and they could’ve continued to be friends afterwards. It was actually really nice to see.
Admittedly the ending kind of threw that aside as it didn’t matter, but I still enjoyed that.
Overall though, it was far from my favourite book by Shepard, but others will love it.
2/5 Stars
Title: Wait For Me
Author: Sara Shepard
Genre: Paranormal/Mystery
Age Range: Young Adult
Publisher: Union Square & Co
Release Date: 1/11/22
BUY LINKS
Lace and Dagger Books 