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Meet the Sky Review



Title: Meet the Sky
Author: McCall Hoyle
Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary
Trigger Warnings: car accident, hurricane, parent leaving, traumatic brain injury, death of a parent, cancer
My Rating: 5 Stars

Synopsis

It all started with the accident. The one that caused Sophie’s dad to walk out of her life. The one that left Sophie’s older sister, Meredith, barely able to walk at all.



With nothing but pain in her past, all Sophie wants is to plan for the future—keep the family business running, get accepted to veterinary school, and protect her mom and sister from another disaster. But when a hurricane forms off the coast of North Carolina’s Outer Banks and heads right toward their island, Sophie realizes nature is one thing she can’t control.


After she gets separated from her family during the evacuation, Sophie finds herself trapped on the island with the last person she’d have chosen—the reckless and wild Finn Sanders, who broke her heart freshman year. As they struggle to find safety, Sophie learns that Finn has suffered his own heartbreak; but instead of playing it safe, Finn’s become the kind of guy who goes surfing in the eye of the hurricane. He may be the perfect person to remind Sophie how to embrace life again, but only if their newfound friendship can survive the storm.


Review

McCall Hoyle's Meet the Sky is part romance, part survival story during a hurricane in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and hold attributes of both genres while combining them into a fun read and relatable characters and issues. Rather than just focusing on how bonding together helps Sophie and Finn survive along during the hurricane, Sophie also finds her own strength separate from that of a boy, becoming her own person and recognizing character flaws in herself as she works to discover what she truly wants.


The descriptions in this book are amazing, showing beauty and disaster and how the two are not mutually exclusive. I could picture what the characters were seeing. Sophie's emotions during these scenes were also described so not only was I able to see this beauty, but I was also able to see how this character was able to view her world.


Not only does beauty and disaster mix, but dreams and reality are also able to mix as Sophie begins to come to terms with her grief after the accident a year ago that resulted in her older sister suffering a traumatic brain injury. That representation as viewed by a family member seemed to be very well done, as Sophie worries and tries to help her mother and her sister, focusing on helping her family. While I do not have experience with traumatic brain injuries, this still hit home with how after a disaster, nothing is the way that it was and everyone in the family changes and adapts, not always for the better. Sophie is still grieving for the person who her sister used to be.


As Finn and Sophie find ways to survive during the hurricane, the story of survival was raw and intense, while still seeming reasonable in the give and take. They take precautions based on experiences they have for living in a hurricane common area and nothing seems too out there. What they know has explanations for how they know these things. I like how it was unintended to have to be in this situation, but they are still able to work out the issues that they have to face on a case by case basis.


My one issue with this story that it did have the tendency to get bogged down in details that just seemed excessive and irrelevant. I was expected some of the details and characters at the beginning to have some sort of role later on, but for the most part, they just don't come back and connect. The ending as a whole felt like it was supposed to wrap up all of the loose ends, but I just feel like too many were left open. The beginning as a whole seems like most of the details could have been cut without impacting the rest of the story at all.


Still, I loved this story and the relationship between Finn and Sophie, which is a mix of past, present, and future, as issues that matter in each come to light. Sophie's relationship with Meredith is also really heartbreaking, particularly at the beginning as Sophie missing the relationship as sisters that they used to have and the people that they used to be. I love survival stories and this one was no exception. I would definitely read this book again, and I really liked how Emilie from The Thing With Feathers (Check out my review of that here) is a background character, though you could definitely just read this book if you wanted to, as this book has more of an emphasis on a survival story than romance. I would definitely recommend this book to survival story lovers, and YA readers in general.


I adored this book, and I like survival stories in general. What is your favorite fictional survival story?


Thank you for reading!
Alyssa
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