Two-Way Street by Lauren Barnholdt

(Goodreads)
Summary from Goodreads - "There are two sides to every breakup.
This is Jordan and Courtney, totally in love. Sure, they were an unlikely high school couple. But they clicked; it worked. They're even going to the same college, and driving cross-country together for orientation.
Then Jordan dumps Courtney -- for a girl he met on the Internet.
It's too late to change plans, so the road trip is on. Courtney's heartbroken, but figures she can tough it out for a few days. La la la -- this is Courtney pretending not to care.
But in a strange twist, Jordan cares. A lot.
Turns out, he's got a secret or two that he's not telling Courtney. And it has everything to do with why they broke up, why they can't get back together, and how, in spite of it all, this couple is destined for each other."


My rating - 3/5 Post-it notes from my cousin proclaiming, "Best Book Ever! Love you, Syd" 
POV - First, alternating between Jordan and Courtney.
Liked - A lot of the lines and situations were pretty funny and added comic relief to an otherwise stressful situation, the ending was nothing very climatic but showed growth in the characters.
Two of my bookmarks holding the places for my favorite quotes fell out so I'm just not going to have one. 


My cousin sent this along with some other books with her parents one holiday because she couldn't come along. On the cover was a post-it from her, reading: "Best Book Ever! Love you, Syd" (I did not get an exclamation point after my name. I see where her loyalties lie.) I decided to trust my cousin on this and finally picked it up a few days ago (her Best Book Ever has most likely changed by now). The opening isn't all that impressive, and Courtney comes off a bit spoiled and... oh man... what's the word? I don't want to say ignorant, because that's not it. Maybe a phrase will convey the message. She seems full of herself. That's not quite it either. But maybe a combination of those two things. She's not someone I totally liked at first. Same thing goes for our co-protagonist (is this a term?), Jordan. He definitely seems a bit full of himself and I couldn't relate to him early on because he mostly talked about hot girls, partying, drinking, etc. So its becoming one of those books.
But wait! Jordan gets caught up in something he was not supposed to find out about. Now it gets interesting. I caught on to what the main conflict was as soon as it was introduced, which left no real surprises, and I imagine for other readers it was predictable as well. It didn't ruin much for me, because I still saw the characters growing from this and I really liked that. As he is fighting with himself internally and we see his thought processes, its easy to understand that things are building up and are bound to get ugly. 
The author switches back and forth from present time to a specified time in the past, which I really liked. I also think the switching helped to show the growth of the characters.
One thing I really didn't like about the writing was that the character would think something and then say it in the exact same way. The first couple of times it was kind of cute and funny, but after that it was just over-used. An example- "I swallow. How does he know about that? 'How do you know about that?' I ask." (Pg. 282) This was probably the last occasion it was used, and I almost threw the book on the floor. I was really tired of the repetition. I promise I'm not usually so almost-violent to my books.
The characters were a little frustrating to me and I got really bored of Jordan describing himself and blah, blah, blah. This book wasn't so good for me. I hope its no longer my cousin's Best Book Ever. Now that I'm thinking back on it, the ending was pretty bland. I've changed the rating from 4/5 to 3/5. I don't think I would recommend this book to you, dear reader. This is not the Best Book Ever.