strictly literary: the inevitable collision of birdie & bash by candace ganger

the inevitable collision of birdie & bash looks like your standard contemporary ya—lighthearted, frothy, fun. except in this case judging a book by its cover will give you some serious whiplash, because this novel is heavy, sad, and tragic. though this is a love story, it probably shouldn't be.

both birdie and bash suffer some great tragedies in the month that spans the novel's timeline. and the fact that bash is inextricably linked to birdie's tragedy makes their entire relationship problematic. and bash knows this. he spends most of the time treating birdie badly, so it's hard to understand what about bash keeps her coming back.

chemistry and chemical reactions thread the narrative as a way to explain the connections between characters and events. but in the end, there is too much plot and not enough character development going on here. the sum total of all the horrible circumstances that birdie and bash are dealing with, is too much, it becomes too hard to believe that things could be that bad. or be resolved so magically.

and maybe that's the problem i had, there was so much that needed to be fixed, that when everything does blow up, the way things are solved doesn't feel earned or realistic to me.

**the inevitable collision of birdie & bash will publish on july 25, 2017. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/st. martin's press (griffin) in exchange for my honest review.