Summary:
When it comes to love there’s no such thing as conventional.
Everyone thinks Colton Neely is special.
Lilly Evans just thinks he’s fascinating.
Once friends when they were younger, their bond is cut short due to her accident prone nature and they go their separate ways. Years later, they meet again and Lilly learns that there is something special about the boy she once knew, but she has no idea what it all means. And she’s not sure if she’s ready to find out.
When he walks through the corridor of her school the first day of her senior year, she knows that it’s time to get to know the real Colton Neely. The more she learns, the deeper she falls.
Their friendship grows into love, even as Colton does not express it in words. But one decision threatens to break down the world that Lilly has tried so hard to integrate into and she must figure out if the relationship can survive if they are apart.
Review:
It’s taken me a while to sit and think about writing this review. My immediate reaction, when I finished was to send the author a FB message telling her she made me cry (which I did and I’m not ashamed to admit it), but they weren’t sad tears. This is, by no means, a sad book. It’s a book of hope and of love. At the core, it’s a love story, but once you delve in, it is so much more.
Lilly and Colton meet as kids, but are pulled aprt by his mother. It’s quite obvious that there is something ‘different’ about Colton, but Lilly doesn’t care. He saved her life and is her friend, she accepts him for who he is as only kids can do.
Fast foward a few years, and they meet again in their senior year of High School where they meet again. What follows is Lilly’s education into Asperger’s and her further acceptance of Colton as she falls in love with him. As ever in a good old romance story, love isn’t always easy, and for this adorable couple, that is definitely true.
Lilly not only has to learn how to understand Colton’s way of life and thinking, she also has to deal with how others perceive him. Johnson does this in a beautiful and simplistic way that the reader cannot help but be drawn in, unable to put the book down. What happens next must be known!
This reads as quite a personal journey for Johnson, and her love for the subject shines through the words on the page. Autism and Asperger’s are often seen as controversial issues that many authors approach for shock value, or to be spoken about. This is not the case with Puddle Jumping. Sensitivity and decorum are the order of the day, as she has been able to provide Colton with a voice of his own which enables those who don’t or have never, interact with anyone on the spectrum see that these amazing people are capable of love, affection, and a relationship, it’s just different. Believe me, my autistic cousin has been in a long term relationship for almost 4 yars now, and I see how happy he and his girlfriend make each other.
As I said to the author, just because their brains are wired a little funky, it doesn’t mean they can’t love. If anything, they love that little bit more, they just don’t show everyone around them in quite the same way. But then again, no one loves in quite the same way, on the spectrum or not.
Seriously, if you only buy one book today (yeah… ok), buy this one.
Mich's Book Reviews 