Home Is Where You Are by Tessa Marie

From Goodreads:

Anna’s life reads like a check list.
Straight A’s (Check)
Editor of the school paper (Check)
Volunteering time at the local soup kitchen (Check)
Ivy League (So close she can taste it)
Falling in love with a homeless boy (Not on the list)

Dean has a plan too. Survive. After being subjected to his foster father’s violent attacks, Dean made the hard choice to leave. Now he lives on the streets doing everything he can to get by, refusing to let people help him. But when he meets Anna, he realizes not everyone is out to hurt him.

Slowly, Anna and Dean let each other in, blending their two worlds into one. But when a series of events brings Dean’s world into perspective, he pushes Anna away. Not willing to accept the line that divides them, Anna sets out to bring Dean back to her. Her determination and faith in their future puts her on the tracks of danger, and he is the only one who can save her.

My Review…

As I see it, the only thing worse than death is life. Maybe not everyone’s life. But mine is a lonely, sad existence with no point other than to survive another day”

This is one of those books that I don’t want to rate. I only gave it a 3.5 but really you guys, I loved it. I’ll explain later why. I really think that there are books that cannot fit into a rating.

The plot is really not that unheard of. Poor guy who is homeless meets not-so-poor girl who always wear cardigans and always has the perfect grades. But you know what, despite the cliché-ness of it all and that I practically read this plotline before, Home is Where You Are stands out. This book is so hopeful and it gave me all that fuzzy feeling like I have butterflies inside my stomach. I swooned, I got teary eyed and it’s just so… sweet.

I had some reservations when it comes to Anna because Dean is homeless and letting him inside her house to take a shower is just plain stupid. And they just knew each other for 2 days. I’m sorry, but doesn’t she watch the news? Tsk. But anyway, I let that one slide since they’re so adorable together. Anna is likeable when she’s thinking straight. She’s actually not one of those protagonists that annoy me so much because they cannot stop thinking about the body of the love interest. Anna’s kindness is so real I can feel it through the pages. And okay .okay, I admit, for a homeless guy, Dean is sooooo swoon-worthy. He made me giggle instead of barfing when he’s turning his charm on– which is very rare to happen. I usually barf.

I read an ARC but I feel like mentioning this on my review. There’s a lot of spelling errors. There’s also a weird thing that happened: a few chapters in and Dean mentioned her sister to Anna but fast forward to chapter 18 and she sounded surprised when she heard of it.. like it’s a brand new information. It wasn’t mentioned in her monologue that she forgot about it so yeah, it’s an error. It’s an error that hopefully, the author will fix before publishing the book.

And that’s how it came to a 3.5. But like I said above, I really loved it. A very sweet and hopeful book. It will leave you with a smile and a very light feeling.