First Love by James Patterson

First Love is not what I would consider a normal Patterson book.

Yes, he has a lot of young adult novels.

Yes, he has some romance novels.

But, this is a cross over between the two, and I didn’t really feel like I was reading a Patterson book at all.

That being said, it was not bad. I actually really enjoyed it.

First Love is basically a new-age Bonnie and Clyde story. Two high school students, Axi and Robinson, decide to leave their small town on the West Coast and travel all over the country.

Doing something like this is completely different for Axi because she is known as a good girl who gets good grades. No one would imagine she would skip the last part of her semester to steal cars and take off around the United States.

That’s right, I said steal cars.

Axi’s original plan was to take a bus from destination to destination. She had the whole trip mapped out, and everything that they would need was packed in her bad.

Robinson had a different idea. If they were going to run away, they were going to go all out. He decides to hotwire a motorcycle as their first vehicle, and they speed away towards their first destination.

Their trip was going great; they were getting closer than ever . . . and falling further in love with each other. Then, the worst thing happened.

Cancer.

Axi and Robinson originally met in the hospital. They both had cancer, and upon deciding to go on this trip, they were both in remission.

But as their trip progressed, they realized Robinson was becoming seriously ill again. The cancer was back, and it wasn’t going to let go of him this time.

This book turned from a happy love story to one of fighting through emotions and finding strength when you only want to fall apart.

It was a roller coaster of emotions, and it was written so well that you didn’t expect what was coming.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found it to be a really addicting story. It was hard to put the book down when I started it. That is pretty typical for a Patterson book, but as I said before, I didn’t feel like I was reading a Patterson book.

Overall, it was a really sweet love story and an otherwise crazy plot of two kids on the run from their lives at home.

4/5 stars

Memorable Quote: "Maybe the compulsion to run away was genetic. Mom did it to escape her grief. My dad escapes with alcohol. Now I was doing it . . . and it felt strangely right"

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