Average rating 4.39 deg_deg Really?!? 
 It's not just that this book is lame and predictable (characters hang out at a club where customers improvise poetry: guess how the protagonists will declare their love to each other?),the big problem here is that the main character is stupid. Selfish and stupid. Egocentric and stupid. Think of any synonym for stupid and you'll have our Lake. 
 Lake is the the new girl in town, just arrived in Michigan from Texas with mom and little brother after her father's death. The time she spends mourning her father is minimum but of course she's giving her mother a hard time for leaving Texas, despite that in Texas she didn't know anyone. Really. After 18 years spent there she doesn't have anyone to call, anyone to miss. No. One. With the exclusion of a supposed best friend and a supposed ex who are briefly mentioned in the middle of the book and quickly forgotten. Besides her strong Texas origins are shown by the fact that she uses the expression "y'all". Once. (Great background setting here!). But she misses Texas. Oh yes. 
 Of course the minute she arrives in Michigan she meets the new neighbour. Note that this is the only neighbour she ever meets and, of course, he is super hot, has a little brother the same age of hers and he immediately falls for her. One week and one date later he is the love of her life. 
 Problem is, in that so meaningful first date, in which of course our super hot hero shows how super cool and profound he is by improvising poetry, he never mentions that he is a teacher and she never mention that she's still in high school. 
 From this point onwards Will spends his time explaining Lake that they can't be together since he's her teacher and he'll lose his job and he has not other way to support himself and his little brother. 
 But why this should bother our Lake. Why Will doesn't risk his career and starve himself and his brother to death in the name of ETERNAL LOVE??? Of course this is inconceivable, so Lake's mature reaction is to guilty trip him, stomp her feet, scream, insult and lock herself in her bedroom. Until Will has to add an overly dramatic stray to his already pitiful story just to make understand he CAN'T lose his job but the only thing that she understands is that she now loves him even more. Hello there? you are 18 for f*** sake, not 12, not 10, how can't you understand the importance of not losing your job??!! 
 By the way, here we start to understand why Lake didn't have a social life in Texas: every time something doesn't go as she wants she screams, throws herself in a bed and cries herself to sleep. For over a month she doesn't do anything beside sleeping, being moody, sleeping, experience breathing problems, sleeping. Her lover, her new best friend, her mother share their life-altering problems with her but she's so self absorbed that she only cares about how these problem influence her life. 
 I don't want to annoy you with all the predictable details of this novel, let's just mention the most ridiculous ones like the fact that of course Will is not a common teacher, he's a supercool teacher so he doesn't teach poetry but he force his student to write it (what? Robin Williams already did that in "Dead Poet Society"? no,no, don't mention it, poetry here is way coooler!). Problem with these super cool teachers is that they don't understand that not anyone want to spill his/her most intimate secrets in front of friends and strangers, not anyone is a talented performer, not anyone wants to be forced to bare his soul in public in exchange for a good grade. This is not teaching, this is forcing other people to be like you. 
 And since we are talking about poetry, the poetry displayed in this book is really really bad. Maybe dear Will you should have limited yourself to teach old Dickinson and Frost instead of buggering us with this lousy verses. I'm sorry to spoil someone's romantic dream, but not anyone is a poet, I don't care how profound and significant your innermost feelings are. 
 And then again this abused cliche of the first-person narration which is just an excuse for plain writing. It's funny how all the authors of these kind of novels try to make up for their lack of descriptive capacity and character analysis by filling the book of annoying details like the bathroom and grooming routines of their characters. 
 Oh, and I almost forgot the ridiculous ending in which all the problems separating our couple are magically forgotten and Will understands that her would-be girlfriend is more important that the welfare of his 9 years old brother, who is alone in the world. WHAT a PROFOUND MESSAGE! VERY MATURE! 
 There are so many other things I hated about this novel but I don't see the point of ranting for pages and pages, let's just say I found this predictable,shallow, boring and, despite the many tragedies the author has poured in her book, absolutely not touching.