Liz Grant is about to have the summer of her life. She and her friend MacKenzie are getting invited to all the best parties, and with any luck, Innis Taylor, the most gorgeous guy in Bonneville, will be her boyfriend before the Fourth of July.Local teen convict released early.
Jason Sullivan wasn’t supposed to come back from juvie. A million years ago, he was her best friend, but that was before he ditched her for a different crowd. Before he attacked Innis’s older brother, leaving Skip’s face burned and their town in shock.
“Everything is not what you think.”
Liz always found it hard to believe what they said about Jason, but all of Bonneville thinks he’s dangerous. If word gets out she’s seeing him, she could lose everything. But what if there’s more to that horrible night than she knows? And how many more people will get hurt when the truth finally comes out?
“You’re the one person who believes in me.”
Leah Konen’s southern romance swelters with passion as it explores the devastating crush of lies, the delicate balance of power and perception, and one girl’s journey to find herself while uncovering the secrets of so many others.
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." You are one of
the characters in your book, how would they describe what this means to them?
Beauty, both physical and otherwise, is a big part of The Last Time We Were Us so this prompt
is particularly apt! I’ll be looking at it from the perspective of Liz, the
book’s main character.
At the beginning of the book, Liz Grant would definitely
have very frank things to say about the phrase, “Beauty is in the eye of the
beholder”—mainly that it’s nice idea but doesn’t really hold up, the kind of
thing a guidance counselor would say, or an article about waiting for “the
one.”
Beauty is a ticket in Liz’s high school world. It gets
you guys. It gets you friends. It gets you invited to the right parties and
seats at the right lunch tables. It got her older sister, Lyla, her popularity
and her constant string of boyfriends (and her now fiancé). Liz knows that
she’s pretty—not as much as her sister—but pretty enough to attract Innis, the
most popular guy in her town.
Of course, Liz wasn’t always like that. She didn’t used
to care about such material things. She knows, deep down, that there’s more to
high school—to life—than looks and popularity. But the pressures of Southern
femininity are strong. Recognizing that beauty is only skin deep is, frankly,
easier said than done for a teen girl in North Carolina.
When Liz reconnects with her childhood friend, Jason, she
sees a beauty in him that others don’t. Everyone else thinks he’s dangerous,
cold-hearted, and cruel. But she can’t bring herself to believe all that, as
much as she tells herself she should. Plus, the closer she gets to Innis, the
more she realizes that he might not be so beautiful after all. There’s a
darkness behind his perfect high-school physique and his cultivated Southern
charm.
Through her journey in The Last Time We Were Us, Liz is
challenged to look beyond the surface and to realize that what looks shiny and
perfect from the outside may be anything but. Beauty truly is in the eye of the
beholder—and beauty means something different to everyone—even if
Liz doesn’t truly realize it just yet.
Leah Konen grew up in a two-stoplight farming town in Washington State before moving to suburban North Carolina, where there were many more stoplights and lots of sweet tea. After studying journalism at the University of North Carolina, she headed to New York City to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. When she’s not working on novels and articles or writing for fashion brands, she enjoys devouring new books, spoiling her dog, Farley, biking around Brooklyn, checking out live music, and binge-watching TV. Find her online at www.leahkonen.com.a Rafflecopter giveaway
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Week 1:
5/12: The Young Folks - Top 10
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Great question and great post! I loved reading this, and gave me more perspective about the book.
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