Speed Date: Book Review by Lauren Morrill

The Story is about High School Jrs.
People on the cover look about 30

The Deal: For high school junior Julia somethings are Meant to Be, like she's sure the love of her life is her next door neighbor and childhood-friend Max, even though they haven't spoken since he moved back into town. So, when her English class winds up in London for a few days, Julia doesn't really want anything out of the experience other than seeing museums, read Pride and Prejudice in an actual English garden and have a good learning experience.  She's not looking for adventure or anything that her classmates would call fun.  She's out of luck, though, because her English teacher decides to implement The Buddy System and she's paired up with Jason, the class' clown who insists on calling her Book Licker and annoy her every chance he has. With Jason around, it seems like adventure is unavoidable. 
My Thoughts: Before reading Meant to Be, I had heard some buzz about it. I heard a lot of people saying it was a bit like Anna and the French Kiss but in London - I didn't really get the comparison, if it reminded me of anything was of something between Girl at Sea and The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson, though it's more a 'feeling of the book' then any actual plot points or the like. 
I thought it was a solid debut novel, I really liked the epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter. I found Jason a bit too full of manic energy for my liking and I never really warmed up to Julia, but the situations - once they got going - were amusing. 
But, sadly, that was my biggest problem with the book: The start is very slow and it totally fails the 3 Chapters/50 pages test, as in I usually dump a book if it hasn't grabbed me within the first three chapters or fifty pages. I by-passed those marks and I still felt like the book hadn't started yet, and if it hadn't been a book for review, I would have probably stopped right there. 
That being said, it's not a bad book, I just wasn't blown away by it.  1/3