Rating: 5 stars
From Goodreads:
What if you live for the moment when life goes off the rails—and then one day there’s no one left to help you get it back on track?
Althea Carter and Oliver McKinley have been best friends since they were six; she’s the fist-fighting instigator to his peacemaker, the artist whose vision balances his scientific bent. Now, as their junior year of high school comes to a close, Althea has begun to want something more than just best-friendship. Oliver, for his part, simply wants life to go back to normal, but when he wakes up one morning with no memory of the past three weeks, he can’t deny any longer that something is seriously wrong with him. And then Althea makes the worst bad decision ever, and her relationship with Oliver is shattered. He leaves town for a clinical study in New York, resolving to repair whatever is broken in his brain, while she gets into her battered Camry and drives up the coast after him, determined to make up for what she’s done.
Their journey will take them from the rooftops, keg parties, and all-ages shows of their North Carolina hometown to the pool halls, punk houses, and hospitals of New York City before they once more stand together and face their chances. Set in the DIY, mix tape, and zine culture of the mid-1990s, Cristina Moracho’s whip-smart debut is an achingly real story about identity, illness, and love—and why bad decisions sometimes feel so good.
Althea & Oliver is an absolutely stunning debut. It lost me a little bit in the middle when it went unexpected places, but I caught up and fell back in love.
Althea & Oliver is really Althea’s story, obviously, since she’s the one who is awake. It’s what she does, how her life goes on, as Oliver sleeps for weeks and maybe months at a time. It’s dual perspective-y, but it’s mainly Althea.
I was apprehensive to start this due to the less than 4 star rating on Goodreads. I know it doesn’t REALLY mean anything and there’s no accounting for taste, but I understand why a lot of people probably don’t like this one. I read some of those reviews and I get it, but those are probably people who voted that a world without love would be a worse place to live than a world without water, so. Don’t let that keep you from reading Althea & Oliver like I almost did.
Althea is definitely a girl who would sit at my lunch table. The hair and the boots and the PRB ice berg. She would need us while Oliver sleeps.
Althea & Oliver is all about best friends. The push and the pull. You know the feeling you would get in high school when your best friend was out sick? It’s that, times infinity. I didn’t love Oliver the way I love Althea because I’m always going to choose the girl in the pleated plaid skirt and combat boots.
I can’t wait for more from Moracho!
