I'm The Whole Thing Together 
Author: Ann Brashares
Publisher: Penguin Teen Australia
Release date: 1/05/17
Pages: 293 pages
R.R.P: $19.99
Ray and Sasha share a bedroom, they have overlapping circles of friends and the same sisters- but they've never met.
Once Sasha's dad and Ray's mum were married and has three daughters. But the marriage crumbled. Now there are two new families with two new children, Sasha and Ray, and during the summer months they alternate sharing a rambling beach house.
Teenagers now, Ray and Sasha find themselves becoming more and more curious about each other. When they finally meet, it's a summer filled with romance and secrets... And a tragedy that will break or heal their families forever.
My review
Thoughts on the book: The Whole Thing Together by Ann Brashares is an interesting contemporary novel about a split family. Ray is on one side and Sasha is on the other and together they share three sisters, Emma, Quinn and Mattie (Ray's mum, Lila, is the girls mum and Sasha's dad, Robert, is their dad). They all share a holiday house, alternating weekends and holidays between the two families as Robert and Lila refuse to speak to each other let alone be in the same room as each other. This means that although the they share siblings Ray and Sasha have nave actually met. That is until they bump into each other accidentally at a mutual friends party and hit it right off. Soon they are sending each other emails and getting to know each other really well and they might even get to actually really meet each other in person at their oldest mutual sisters engagement party. But will everything go to plan and the families actually get along or will the night end in tears with the whole party a shamble?
I have to say that the story has a pretty solid plot line which is fairly easy to follow: there are 3 sisters whose parents divorced and then remarried with each new remarried couple having another child around the same time. Now those two children share three sisters and alternate weekends and holidays at the holiday house but have never met. Simple right (well I think it is but maybe that's because I was a bit like these families). The bit that I actually found confusing was the ever changing POV's and by ever changing I mean in one paragraph it could change from say Emma to Quinn and you wouldn't really know until about three quarters of the way through. Normally if authors do different POV like this then use different fonts but not in this book. I did like hearing all the different POV's as I got to see how everyone felt about the different situations that happened throughout the book and we also got to see how both families lived. It just would have been nice to have a bit more of a way to discerne who was who.
The last 100 pages of this book absolutely wrecked me. I have never openly wept so much or felt so distraught for characters ever. I was so emotional that I had to put the book down and take a breather. I felt every emotion that the families were going through and it was so heartbreaking to witness even in a fictional book. But the book did end really well, not the way that I expected it too but still giving it a balanced ending. I would defiantly read more about this family if the author was to write more about them.
Rating: 4/5
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