REVIEW for It's Not You, It's Me

A big thank you goes out to the author Kerry Cohen Hoffmann AND Random House for sending me a copy of this book!

TITLE: It's Not You, It's Me

AUTHOR: Kerry Cohen Hoffmann

GENRE: YA

RATING: 4 Stars

I am a huge fan of Kerry Hoffmann. I have read her previous books and adored them. I was, therefore, extremely thrilled when I received this one!

It's Not You, It's Me is actually a YA novel where we meet our main character Zoë who is in the midst of a romantic crisis. She has been dating Henry for the last 6 months and every night at exactly 9:00 p.m. they call each other on the telephone and say goodnight to each other. Except this night (day 1), Zoë has been calling and all she gets is voice mail. She immediately gets a sinking, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach telling her that this relationship is over.

Sure enough, the next day, Henry tells her its over 'but hey! let's be friends' (why do guys ALWAYS say this absolutely stupid thing????).

From this moment, we, the readers get to follow, day by day, Zoe's descent into heartbreak and depression where she is unable to accept his decision and tries just about everything to 'get him back'.

From the first page of this novel, I instantly connected with Zoë. Although to some, the fact that Henry was not answering his telephone on that one night would mean nothing, I would have (I actually have) reacted exactly the same as Zoë did - freaked out! Somehow she knew - even if to most people, she just appeared to be panicking over nothing.

What struck me the most about this novel is how single minded and totally misguided Zoe was! No matter what her friends told her or no matter what she knew inside was the right thing to do, she almost self-destructively went ahead and did the opposite. When I read the passage where she actually climbs up a tree in order to throw a poem in Henry's room, I thought 'this girl has lost it' and I felt myselt cringe. Yet, at the same time, I kept asking myself how many stupid, dangerous and foolish things I had done in my life (not only as a teen) to get, keep or get back a guy that had left.

I have a theory that for the most part, when it comes to men, women can be very stupid!!!! and I kept thinking this as I was reading this book.

Here is a bright girl, who has good friends, a fairly stable family (although I have to say that I thought that the parental support and interest in this novel was almost non-existent!) can be so thrown off by a breakup - yet, I also knew exactly how she felt. This book was difficult to read at times because it brought back lots of bad memories for me (although I never went up a tree thank goodness).

Having read Hoffmann's books, I am familiar with her background and it is obvious that she is very familiar with her main character - Hoffmann is a master at taking the 'broken' side of the female brain - usually the one associated with sex, love and men and putting it out there.

This book is a must read for all females - its almost like looking into a mirror.