I'm Not Missing by Carrie Fountain

Thursday, July 12, 2018

When Miranda Black’s mother abandoned her, she took everything—the sun, moon, and stars—and Miranda found shelter in her friendship with Syd, who wore her own motherlessness like a badge of honor: Our mothers abandoned us. We won’t go begging for scraps.

When Syd runs away suddenly and inexplicably in the middle of their senior year, Miranda is abandoned once again, left to untangle the questions of why Syd left, where she is—and if she’s even a friend worth saving. Her only clue is Syd’s discarded pink leopard print cell phone and a single text contained there from the mysterious HIM. Along the way, forced to step out from Syd’s enormous shadow, Miranda finds herself stumbling into first love with Nick Allison of all people and learning what it means to be truly seen, to be finally not missing in her own life.

Published July 10, 2018 by Flatiron Books
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My Thoughts:
I'm Not Missing follows the story of Miranda who has always been in the background of her best friend Syd's spotlight. Syd is the top student in their class, flirts with all the boys, and the only person who teases Mir for her crush on Nick Allison. When Syd mysteriously leaves and claims she's "gone, not missing", Miranda is forced to be seen by everyone, especially her crush Nick. It's about the budding romance between Miranda and Nick, but mostly about how Miranda has to start making decisions for herself.

Miranda was a great character to see develop in this story. She's a rather shy character, but is sassy around those she is closed to, like Syd and her dad. Her history with her mom played a big part of the story, as there's a book that Miranda's mother left behind that appears often. Miranda is kind of all over the place, with what she wants to do with her life, her religion, to reciting the Gettysburg Address randomly. All of these odd quirks make for a beautifully flawed character that makes you feel for her and rooting for her the whole time.

Then of course, there's the romance. There's the undeniable awkwardness between Miranda and Nick, and it's the cutest thing ever. They're both relatively new to the boyfriend/girlfriend thing, so I loved seeing them fumble through having a romantic relationship and seeing their feelings develop. The one thing that I wished we got to see was the relationship develop a little bit more. In the beginning, it's kind of just a snap of the fingers and the two characters are dating, and I wish we would have gotten to see the awkwardness between them even more. On the other end, it was great to see them already in a relationship because then you got to see how it progressed with the story. They get more comfortable with each other, are braver in their actions, and understand each other more. That was something you odon't often see in romance contemporaries. Usually, it's about a relationship developing and then they live happily ever after, but this was great to see it from the start of the relationship through the honeymoon phase and what happened after.

The other relationships in the book were very well thought out and guided the story along. Miranda's father was my absolute favorite character. To be honest, he reminds me of my best friend's father. Quirky, tries to be overly cool with the teen crowd but has an obvious soft spot for his daughter. The banter between the two of them was a great balance to everything else and had me chuckling.

The only downfall of this book was my expectations going into it. The summary of this book really threw me off. I don't know if I was the only one, but I kind of expected it to be more of a mystery of where Syd was, what she was doing, and overall the story was going to be about Miranda trying to piece together the clues left behind. The part where she finds Syd's phone isn't until about halfway through the novel, and at that point, it was kind of a subplot.

The only reason I'm not giving this book a 5 stars is because it wasn't an absolutely FAVORITE of mine, and that's what I reserve my 5 star reviews for. I highly recommend this to people who want a contemporary that's not all light and fluffy romance, but has other relationships present.

What I Liked: Character development, cute romance
What I Disliked: Book summary was misleading

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