Review: Waiting for You by Shey Stahl

Waiting for You
Shey Stahl
Series: Waiting for You #1
Publication date: February 21st 2013
Rating: ★★★☆☆

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Bailey Gray is tired of her perfectly planned life. Everything about her life has been organized and lived out to the expectations set of her parents. She is the class valedictorian, has perfect grades, the perfect friends, a perfect boyfriend, basically perfect life...or so everyone thought. That's when she realizes the path planned isn't always the path chosen.

On graduation day she makes a decision. One that changes everything she thought she knew about her intended future.

On a whim, she runs away with the town rebel, Dylan Wade, in search of the unknown.

Dylan Wade isn't looking to run away from anything.

He knows what he wants as he's been waiting on it for years.

On a journey to find the unknown, they discover a friendship they once knew along the open highway and have not a care in the world. Between the yellow and white lines of the heated summer asphalt, a spark draws them together as Dylan's past and Bailey future try to ripe them apart.

Could it be that Dylan and his GTO are exactly what her perfectly planned life needs?

Bailey is tired of meeting everyone's expectations of what she should do with her life and what kind of person she should be. She's tired of having her life planned out for her by her parents and of having to be the perfect daughter, student, best friend, and the perfect girlfriend. They forced her on a path they would have liked to go on themselves, and Bailey doesn't know how to make them understand she wants something different.

Something quite like what she felt when she was little and used to play with her neighbor, Dylan.

Or really, when she was "allowed" to spend some time with him.

Because when tragedy struck Dylan's family and his father started to drink, Dylan started acting out. He earned his bad boy title sooner in life, and Bailey's parents didn't think she'd get something out of being friends with him other than a bad reputation by association. So Bailey, being used to doing what her parents want, cuts all ties to the one person that makes her feel normal.

It's not until graduation day that Bailey finds herself strong enough to break the control her parents have over her and her life, and her first step into becoming an independent person who stands up for herself is done in style. In the form of her getting in a car with Dylan and driving away from the only life she's ever known.

Dylan has his own reasons to leave their town behind, but he doesn't turn Bailey away when she asks him to let her come with him. He's actually pleasantly surprised to have her around, because he never really forgot the little girl Bailey used to be. And he definitely wouldn't mind having her back, making her his.

They take off without looking back, ready to find something more for themselves, ready to let themselves feel and experience life in their own terms. Both Bailey and Dylan rediscover their friendship and find that what they feel for each other runs deeper than that, and they learn who they really are, that it's okay to go after their dreams, and that sometimes people makes mistakes.

Waiting for You is a really sweet story about finding yourself and realizing that it's okay to break the mold and do what makes you happy, whatever that is.

I'm a big fan of road trip books, but this didn't really grasping my attention. I still had fun reading about Bailey and Dylan's relationship and how it changed with the more asphalt they left behind, but it ended up just being an okay read for me.

Even though I really really really liked the characters - I especially related a lot to Bailey, with the whole tired of meeting people's expectations of her thing - and the plot kept me hooked, I found some of the dialogue really sappy. It was just so freaking sweet sometimes I'd have to stop reading and go do something else because I just couldn't take it. It made me cringe.

But overall, Waiting for You was a really fun read about a boy and a girl who set out to prove to themselves that there's more to life than what they lived so far. They find love and themselves along the way, growing up as the scenery changes, and realizing that doing what's important to you and being happy matters more than doing what people expect you to.