Reviewed by K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite
To Love Someone is a work of fiction in the romance and religious genres and serves as the first installment in the Lindell High School series. It is aimed at young adults and was penned by Claire Nance. The book follows teenager Dee Anderson as she struggles to start a relationship without it getting torpedoed by her sister. When the sporting hero of her school, Slate Garrett, starts to take an interest in her, Dee must fight back against her own social anxiety, her sister’s man-stealing habits, and an unseen force in her life determined to keep the two of them apart.
The trials and tribulations of finding love as a teenager are very familiar to me and most of the people I know, particularly when the barrier to that love comes in part from issues with anxiety and self-esteem. As such, the characters of this book will be very familiar to most readers, but Claire Nance does a remarkable job of characterizing them so that they don’t rely entirely on that familiarity with the stereotypes. Slate and Dee both eschewed the directions I expected them to take when we first met them and demonstrated a very welcome depth of character that gives this work its excellent flavor. The plot will pleasantly surprise you in many places. Dee’s ability to avoid some of the obvious traps that romance heroines fall into makes her a likable hero that I rooted for from start to finish. To Love Someone takes a scenario that many of us remember from our own younger days and runs with it in an interesting and dynamic direction.
