Meet Me In Outer Space by Melinda Grace

Title:  Meet Me In Outer Space

Author:  Melinda Grace
Publisher: Swoon Reads
Publishing Date:  March 12th, 2019

Pages: 272
Genre:  YA Contemporary

Series:  Stand Alone
Source:  ARC

 

Edie Kits has a learning disability. Well, not a learning disability exactly, but a disability that impacts her learning. It isn't visible, it isn't obvious, and it isn't something she likes to advertise.

And for three semesters of college, her hard work and perseverance have carried her through. Edie thinks she has her disability under control until she meets her match with a French 102 course and a professor unwilling to help her out.

Edie finds herself caught between getting the help she needs and convincing her professor that she isn't looking for an easy out. Luckily for Edie, she has an amazing best friend, Serena, who is willing to stitch together a plan to ensure Edie's success. And then there's Hudson, the badly dressed but undoubtedly adorable TA in her French class who finds himself pulled into her orbit...

I received this one for review without knowing too much about it but it sounded good. I love a good contemporary but I am so very picky. I thought this one would be grand because it’s about a person with a disability. One I don’t know anything about. I am a sucker for disability books because I like learn about the disability. This book was a good read. I enjoyed the romance. I enjoyed learning about the disability. It was a very fast read. I do feel there was a little something missing but I am not sure what it was. I enjoyed it but I didn’t love it as I had hoped I would.

This is about a girl with a auditory disability the difficulties she experiences in college. To get some help she employs the tutoring of a TA. A very cute and smug TA. She is leaving for Paris in the summer and she wants to be ready to speak French. Communicating and learning are already difficult for her because of her disability. So it’s important to her that she does well in French. The professor is difficult and doesn’t really seem keen on helping her. But the TA is. And that is what turns into the making of a love story.

So this book was a good read. I did enjoy it but I did have a few issues with it that I will get into. First I want to discuss what I did enjoy. I enjoyed the characters and the romance. The characters were not perfect by far. The main character, Edie, well she just wants to be normal, have a great life, and do what she dreams of doing. He auditory disability seems to get in the way at times but she has pretty much has learned to live with and find way to make things easier for her. The problem comes in when others do not want to help, as in her professor. She is torn between being normal and getting help for her disability. She doesn’t want to get special treatment or be treated with care… but sometimes she needs it. This did become aggravating at times but I did try to understand from Edie’s point of view.

The love interest. Well I just adored him. Yes, he was a little pushy and sometimes a little needy, and often times he comes across as an idiot… but something about it him was just adorable and I found myself rooting for him quite often. The romance was a good one. At first Edie was so not on board, but after a while, Hudson wore her down. The relationship didn’t come without it’s issues but in the long run it was cute and I enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed learning about Edie’s disability. It was interesting and since I knew nothing about this disability I was really into learning what it was and how people like Edie, live with it.

I did enjoy all these things but I also had some issues with them. The characters, I felt that Edie could have been a little more developed. I wanted to feel more of her struggles and her know more about her past. I felt everything I got from Edie was just the surface of her present life. The love story was cute, but it felt it was missing a little something. I would have liked it to be a bit deeper than cute. The disability aspect of the book. I felt it was too secondary to the romance. I would have liked it to be more central to the book.

I feel that this book was so much lighter than I anticipated. My fault or maybe the blurbs fault. I am not sure. If I had gone into this book expecting a light fluffy romance read… this would have been a perfect book. I think I was just expecting a little more depth. However I did still enjoy the book and would recommend to all those contemporary romance fans out there. It would make the prefect beach read this summer.

Nice, light, fluffy romance of a read. 

Melinda Grace wrote her first piece of fiction in middle school, but didn't write a complete story until an introduction to creative writing course at State University of New York at Oswego, where she earned a BA in human development. She went on to earn a MS Ed in counseling from Alfred University and currently works as an elementary school counselor. She loves sunshine, ice cream sandwiches, and anything Disney. Her debut novel Meet Me in Outer Space is an #OwnVoices story.