The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith
Edition: October 9th 2014 by Headline
Goodreads description: Lucy and Owen meet somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floors of a New York City apartment building, on an elevator rendered useless by a citywide blackout. After they’re rescued, they spend a single night together, wandering the darkened streets and marveling at the rare appearance of stars above Manhattan. But once the power is restored, so is reality. Lucy soon moves to Edinburgh with her parents, while Owen heads out west with his father. Lucy and Owen’s relationship plays out across the globe as they stay in touch through postcards, occasional e-mails, and — finally — a reunion in the city where they first met.
My rating: ☽☽☽☽☽/5
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I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to find words good enough, that mean enough- that are enough – to describe this book. But it’s definitely worth my attempt. It’s worth a lot more than that.

I’m not even sure where to start. So I guess, being the logical person that I am, I’m going to start at the end.

When I finished this book, I placed it between my knees and then hugged it (and my knees). I then tried to hold back the tears as I faced my laptop – with Skype open, on a call to my lovely boyfriend, and smiled.

And how many times had they all been stuffed in here together? Dad, with his newspaper folded under his arm, always standing near the door, ready to bolt; Mom, wearing a thin smile, seesawing between amusement and impatience with the rest of them; the twins, grinning as they elbowed each other; and Lucy, the youngest, tucked in a corner, always trailing behind the rest of the family like an ellipsis at the end of a sentence.

And now here she was, in a box that seemed too tiny to hold so many memories, with the walls pressing in all around her and nobody to come to her rescue.

This book is a perfect description of long distance relationships – the inconstant, uneven but definite motion of rushed, loud and exciting hellos and drawn out, quiet and tear speckled goodbyes.

With nothing in between but mere words that don’t fill the gap between two people in love nearly enough – spoken into a phone, typed into a computer or written onto the back of a postcard…

And when they finally meet up after long months of being alone, just being together feels like so much, it feels like waking up from a sleep that was way too long…something this book demonstrates amazingly.

After reading so much romance – Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda followed by How To Be Bad followed by Let It Snow – I thought I was done with reading romance for a while. But I was so, so wrong. Because whith romance books, there’s an extremely fine line between too-much-cheese and overwhelming beauty.

And I’m very happy to tell you, this one was pretty far over the overwhelming beauty line.

In fact, it just made me want to pick up all of my favorite romance books and read the most important parts all over again. Which I think I’ll do in a second.

This one meant so much to be. I’m in a long distance relationship myself, and not only did I completely understand everything this book talked about, but I really related to it. The longing, the missing, the wishing, the being across an ocean. And weirdly enough, me and my boyfriend are across the atlantic just as Lucy and Owen are.

And it’s so true. Everything in this book is so true and pure. But the thing that stands out is this:

Home isn’t a place.

Home is who the heart finds. And whether you’re standing on the top of a highrise in New York City, or on the Point Zero star in Paris – you’ll always feel more at home next to the person you love.

-Beth

May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽

P.S. I wrote this review as a draft, yesterday. Since then, I have not started another book, instead I’ve been reading my favorite parts of all the romance books I own. Carry On, Night Owls, Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour…I can’t get enough love.

P.P.S. No one look at my goodreads. I will have to kill anyone who knows about the amount of romance novels I’ve just added to my TBR list.