Return to Me by Justina Chen (review)

Moving away from her Washington home seems to be a logical part of Reb’s life plan; after the summer, she’ll start at Columbia University, studying to be a corporate architect in the family firm, while her family moves to New Jersey for her father’s new job. All that unravels upon their arrival on the East Coast, when her father announces that he’s leaving the family to be with another woman, forcing Reb to question everything she thought she knew about her life. She travels with her mother and brother to Hawaii, searching for peace and perspective with her eccentric grandparents—and pushing away her beloved boyfriend back home. Chen writes with trembling if sometimes overwritten tenderness of a girl’s coming into her own and figuring out what she wants in the face of crisis. Reb’s narration is emotional and anguished yet reflective as she begins to reconsider everything she has previously taken for granted. Romance fans will appreciate her eventual reunion with Jackson, while realists will find the epilogue, which has the couple later parting ways, to be an authentic touch. The running theme of Reb’s family gift of premonition never really pays off either literarily or psychically, though, and the book handles the exploration of values ham-handedly, with wild unsubtlety in the polarity between the family’s shallow old life and their new devotion to a creative healing retreat with Reb’s mom’s family. Readers will nonetheless appreciate the encouragement to question their roads and embrace their artistic sides, along with the reminder that even bad change can bring good consequences.