Sometimes you have to lose yourself to find where you truly belong…
Most girls would kill to spend months traveling around Europe after college graduation with no responsibility, no parents, and no-limit credit cards. Kelsey Summers is no exception. She’s having the time of her life . . . or that’s what she keeps telling herself.
It’s a lonely business trying to find out who you are, especially when you’re afraid you won’t like what you discover. No amount of drinking or dancing can chase away Kelsey’s loneliness, but maybe Jackson Hunt can. After a few chance meetings, he convinces her to take a journey of adventure instead of alcohol. With each new city and experience, Kelsey’s mind becomes a little clearer and her heart a little less hers. Jackson helps her unravel her own dreams and desires. But the more she learns about herself, the more Kelsey realizes how little she knows about Jackson.
Haven’t read any of Carmack’s other novels? You can check out my review of Losing It , and then decide to go out and buy copies, because you definitely need to!
Now, I can tell you honestly that I wasn’t totally impressed by Kelsey as a character in Losing It, but I think that is mostly because she was a somewhat flat character who served as the standard wild n’ out female to stand opposite the shy and proper protagonist, Bliss. Who, by the way, makes a limited appearance in Finding It.
Anyway, Finding It is happening simultaneously with the end of Losing It and parts of Faking It. Kelsey is travelling across Europe, obviously running away from something in her past, in addition to just traipsing around spending her parents’ money. Although, I’m not going to lie, I totally would do the same if my parents were as ridiculously rich as hers seem.
Even at the beginning of this novel, Kelsey isn’t particularly like-able, and she’s definitely depicted with an alcohol problem. And more than once I was super scared of her being drunk and crazy while alone in Europe. I kept picturing the whole Taken scenario, and was worried that this story was going to take a turn. I shouldn’t have worried. The book has a very Jessica Sorensen feel to it, in my opinion.
Now, this isn’t to say that it’s a bad thing, it just so happens that there are some serious emotional issues going on for both main characters is Finding It, which is a little bit different from the issues that Carmack’s previous characters endured in the other two novels. Which is what made it Sorensen-esque to me, because Sorensen excels at creating broken characters that have to find an anchor in another character to help keep them together. Carmack does this with Kelsey and Hunt.
Overall, the story still ended the way I expected it to, but the getting there was much more interesting and tumultuous than Carmack’s previous two novels.
4.5 Bards for being fun and heartbreaking at the same time.
Moving! 