Review: What Happens Here

Title: What Happens Here
Author: Tara Altebrando
Publication date: May 6th, 2008

Summary:
When Chloe's parents decide to take her to Europe the summer before senior year of high school, she's ecstatic...she only wishes her best friend, Lindsay, could come too. Living in Las Vegas, they have long imagined the world through the casinos inspired by great cities and have vowed to travel the globe together someday. Unfortunately, Lindsay's parents won't agree to send her along.
So Chloe goes to Europe and sends postcards to Lindsay every day. But when she comes home, she must cope with shocking news that rips her family -- and Lindsay's -- apart. And as she tries to uncover the truth about what happened, Chloe soon begins to feel that Lindsay's brother, Noah, is the one person alive for whom she'd go to the ends of the earth....

Review:
This is one of those books that barely anyone has heard of, but I think it deserves more exposure. It was so packed with emotions, from euphoria to depression, and I could really feel each of them. As someone who lives in Nevada and therefore knows Vegas quite well, and having also been to many of the places in Europe that were talked about, I felt that this book captured the feelings of each of the places perfectly. I could easily relate to the feelings that the descriptions of each place evoked, and believe that anyone reading the book who isn't familiar with these places would be able to experience the same emotions, just by the style of writing. It was a fun book in the beginning, but also had a deeper kind of meaning in the last half. Definitely one of those books that sticks around in your mind for a while after you've read it. If you're looking for a book that will give you a different mix of feelings in a perhaps not so normal setting, this is a great book for that.

Characters: 8/10
Plot: 9/10
Originality: 8/10
Writing: 9/10
Overall grade: B