Saving June | Hannah Harrington

"If she'd waited less than two weeks, she'd have been June who died in June. But I guess my sister didn't consider that.""When Harper Scott's Sister, June, commits suicide just before her high school graduation and Harper's divorcing parents decide to split the ashes, Harper steals June's urn and embarks on a journey with her best friend, Laney, and the mysterious and aggravating Jake Tolan to take her sister to the one place she always wanted to go- California. An intense and romantic debut novel. " 

I have to say I wasn't too impressed with this book, I've felt like I've read it before in Ordinary People by Judith Guest and Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. All of them consist of the same main elements. The book begins with the sibling/ close friend committing suicide while the rest of the book follows the protagonist as they attempt to acquire closure. This book in particular had many of the clichéd and overused character personalities.

• The protagonist who hates everything and feels like a complete failure. Harper was this girl. She never expected anything of herself and did whatever she wanted, regardless of the environment or situation. Even though I found qualities of myself in her, I found her extremely unlikable throughout the book.

• The perfect sibling. The one who was also considered better, more successful and perfect. These characters end up being the ones who commit suicide. Throughout the book, everyone looked down on Harper and considered June as the better sibling, but of course she killed herself, so that just shows how much they know. 

• The "wild and free" best friend. There's always that one friend that is more outgoing than the main character but has deep problems that the reader doesn't get to see since the book isn't focused on them.Throughout the book, Laney was known for doing careless things and of course that resulted in her pregnancy. But we also discover she has some problems with her family, which I definitely would have liked to learn a little more about. 

• The mysterious hot guy/girl. In every book there's a hot guy/girl whom the main character knows nothing about then they find out how awesome that person is and end up hooking up with them. I wasn't too fond of Jake, he was too "I'm better than most guys" for lack of better words. 

• The divorce. In every book, just to make the protagonist's life harder, there is always a divorce or some kind of rift in the marriage of the parents. I personally didn't like either the mom or the dad. The mom was somewhat of a hypocrite, she blamed Harper for not being there for her when she herself was leaving Harper alone. The father was just a jerk. People like him make me hate mankind. He has absolutely no right to walk out on his family but claim he had a right on June's ashes.

I'm not saying that I hated this book, but while I was  reading I did feel a sense of deja-vu, as if I'd read so many books like this before, which I have. Did I cry during this book? Yes, of course. But other than the whole death aspect, this book didn't connect with me as a lot of other books have.