Check out on Goodreads | Buy on Amazon Genres: Young Adult, High School Romance
Also by this author: Fight or Flight
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Source: Libby (My Library app)
I am Comet Caldwell.
And I sort of, kind of, absolutely hate my name.
People expect extraordinary things from a girl named Comet. That she’ll be effortlessly cool and light up a room the way a comet blazes across the sky.
But from the shyness that makes her book-character friends more appealing than real people to the parents whose indifference hurts more than an open wound, Comet has never wanted to be the center of attention. She can’t wait to graduate from her high school in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the only place she ever feels truly herself is on her anonymous poetry blog. But surely that will change once she leaves to attend university somewhere far, far away.
When new student Tobias King blazes in from America and shakes up the school, Comet thinks she’s got the bad boy figured out. Until they’re thrown together for a class assignment and begin to form an unlikely connection. Everything shifts in Comet’s ordinary world. Tobias has a dark past and runs with a tough crowd—and none of them are happy about his interest in Comet. Targeted by bullies and thrown into the spotlight, Comet and Tobias can go their separate ways…or take a risk on something extraordinary.
I picked up The Fragile Ordinary by Samantha Young on a whim one night, just looking for a cute boy-meets-girl romance I could sink my teeth into the next few days when I wasn’t busy. I was looking for a fun, flirty, distracting book I could read in between the busy moments.
I started reading at 10 pm…. And wrapped up around 2:30 am, to my shock.
This book completely sucked me in. It follows a high schooler named Comet Caldwell, who is exceptionally shy. Not mild-mannered or timid, just shy and avoidant of most social situations.
People expect something extraordinary of a girl named Comet. Someone effortlessly cool and magnetic. Someone who lights up a room and draws attention the way a comet does when it blazes light and fire across the sky. But a comet, when you break it down, is the opposite. It’s an icy body that releases gas and dust.
Comets are basically great big dirty snowballs.
She was a whip-smart and thoroughly enjoyable character that I adored getting to know. Plus, I really really really really want her room. Wall-to-wall bookcases on three sides, with sliding ladders so she can reach all her books :) That’s what dreams are made of, sister. She’s also a blogger! Sure, she doesn’t review books but publishes anonymous poetry. BUT I RELATE ANYWAY, OKAY?? She also prefers to stay in and curl up with a good book to doing pretty much anything that involves being social with people outside of her friend group, which I support.
Point is, I think Comet is cool as fuck. Even if no one else in the book did.
Except for Tobias King.
He gave her a lopsided smile, all white teeth, and boyish charm, and this little unexpected thrill fluttered in my belly. A feeling I got only when reading about swoon-worthy book boyfriends. I swallowed hard, not sure I was enjoying this new development.
“Tobias King. But you can just call me King.”
Crap. He even had a book-boyfriend name.
Like I said. Comet’s relatable.
Anyway, Tobias, or “King” as his classmates call him, is the new kid from America, where this book takes place in Scotland. He’s hot, has a great voice, cool name, and a devil-may-care attitude, and isn’t afraid to give the teachers some lip. But he’s also in all the highest level advanced classes, indicated a caliber of intelligence that his actions in class do not.
It was hard to concentrate on that first class because my imagination ran away from me. I could feel his presence, burning like a fire behind me, and suddenly he was the hero in a dystopian novel and I was the heroine. I was smart and sassy, he was brooding and taciturn. Whilst I didn’t need help to take down a regime that subjugated women, he was my protector all the same. He taught me to fight harder and I taught him to live harder. After one particular battle, we had to hide out alone, share sleeping quarters and things got —
When Comet and Tobias are thrown together for an English project together, they discover that they actually don’t mind each other’s company, and start to hang out outside of academics… “just as friends.”
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What books have you read lately that surprised you? Have you been completely sucked into a book lately? Let me know in the comment below, I’d love to hear from you!
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