Review of 99 Days by Katie Cotugno

Title/Author: 99 Days by Katie Cotugno
Publisher/Date published: Balzer + Bray, April 21st 2015
How I got this book: received it from the publisher as an egalley
Buy this book at: The Book Depository

Goodreads summary: Day 1: Julia Donnelly eggs my house my first night back in Star Lake, and that’s how I know everyone still remembers everything — how I destroyed my relationship with Patrick the night everything happened with his brother, Gabe. How I wrecked their whole family. Now I’m serving out my summer like a jail sentence: Just ninety-nine days till I can leave for college, and be done.

Day 4: A nasty note on my windshield makes it clear Julia isn’t finished. I’m expecting a fight when someone taps me on the shoulder, but it’s just Gabe, home from college and actually happy to see me. “For what it’s worth, Molly Barlow,” he says, “I’m really glad you’re back.”

Day 12: Gabe got me to come to this party, and I’m actually having fun. I think he’s about to kiss me — and that’s when I see Patrick. My Patrick, who’s supposed to be clear across the country. My Patrick, who’s never going to forgive me.

Reading this book was a bit of a rush, I was SO in the zone that I didn't even really mind that it took them an extra hour to finish up doing work on my car.

It's kinda hard for me to review 99 Days though, because I'm a little conflicted. On one hand I really liked Katie Cotugno's writing and was totally sucked into the lives of Molly, Gabe and Patrick, but on the other hand I was also really cringing at what was happening in this novel and I think that the awesome writing in the end tipped the scale in favor of my very much enjoying 99 Days.

Molly is a flawed character, she cheated on her boyfriend Patrick five minutes after he broke up with her, so technically it's not cheating, but still. And it's with his BROTHER. I mean, yeah, that's basically not ok. BUT I'm all for not judging someone until you know the full story and even though Patrick being a douche isn't an excuse for cheating on him, I can get how it happened. I'm not saying that makes it ok, but I could understand what made her do it. And then Molly spends the summer in her hometown after being gone all year and I was just so with her in her struggle with her feelings for both boys, even though I had a clear favourite, because let's face it, Patrick didn't do much of anything for me and the further we got into the story, the more I thought he was a douche.

I loved Molly's friendship with Imogen and Tess, even though something really bad happens that Imogen labels as 'against Ovary Code', which basically makes me love Imogen even more. Molly burned a lot of bridges when she just up and left home and it has an impact on her friendship with Imogen, which is only logical and I liked seeing them mend this over the summer.
Also, I thought there was a really important subject adressed in 99 Days: slut shaming. Molly gets a boatload of crap about cheating on Patrick and then some. And Gabe just cruises by, and nobody wants to egg his house or key his car and he doesn't get alienated by everyone. It's not fair and this double standard happens all the time and speaking up about it is way overdue.

Also, let me gush a bit about Gabe. Gabe is awesome. So obviously he's not perfect either, cause he slept with his brother's girlfriend, BUT he's just nice and easygoing and accepts Molly for who she is and is very supportive. And also, he sounds totally hot. And I loved how he gets insecure and vulnerable around Molly cause he truly cares for her. It was really sweet.

So Molly and Patrick work some of their shit out over the summer and it's definitely NOT pretty and about halfway through I got this sense of doom of things going down and OMG, I was right and it was AWFUL and I could just not stop reading! Molly really messes up and though I'm again not ok with this, I cannot help but understand how she gets into this situation. I just wanted to shake her and tell her to start making better decisions! But also, I wanted to hug her after and tell her it would be ok in the end and I wished she would have talked about this with Imogen sooner, cause that's what friends are for.

There is no sugarcoating what goes down in 99 Days, and it's definitely not all pretty, but it felt real and I am blown away by the awesomeness that is Katie Cotugno's writing and how she made me root for characters that I didn't necessarily always LIKE. So yeah, I though this was definitely worth reading.

My rating: 4,5 stars