About the Book:
Title: THE SEVEN TORMENTS OF AMY & CRAIG
Author: Don Zolidis
Pub. Date: October 2, 2018
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Formats: Hardcover, eBook, audiobook
Pages: 352
Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Audible, B&N, iBooks, TBD
Janesville, Wisconsin (cold in the sense that there is no God) 1994
The worst thing that’s ever happened to Craig is also the best: Amy. Amy and Craig never should’ve gotten together. Craig is an awkward, Dungeons & Dragons-playing geek, and Amy is the beautiful, fiercely intelligent student-body president of their high school.
Yet somehow they did. Until Amy dumped him. Then got back together with him. Then dumped him again. Then got back together with him again. Over and over and over.
Unfolding during their senior year, Amy and Craig’s exhilarating, tumultuous relationship is a kaleidoscope of joy, pain, and laughter as an uncertain future-and adult responsibility-loom on the horizon.
Craig fights for his dream of escaping Janesville and finding his place at a quirky college, while Amy’s quest to uncover her true self sometimes involves being Craig’s girlfriend?and sometimes doesn’t.
Seven heartbreaks. Seven joys.Told nonsequentially, acclaimed playwright Don Zolidis’s debut novel is a brutally funny, bittersweet taste of the utterly unique and utterly universal experience of first love.
Do you remember you first high school love? I know I certainly do and I can still remember the day we meet. It was through a friend and she was down visiting her grandparents (who lived a few doors from my house) and she came over with him (they were cousins). He was visiting his grandparents from Ontario and we instantly hit it off. That was one of the best summers ever and looking back I realized that we were sort of like Amy & Craig with the exception that we never really broke up and got back together all the time. Yes we did drift apart but I think that was due to the fact he lived in Ontario and I lived in New Brunswick and we would always reconnect every so often and date and repeat the cycle. Not once did we say to each other that we were breaking up. I hope that makes sense LOL and just a FYI we are still friends today and talk every now and then.
Anyways onto the book and I quickly want to thank Rockstar Book Tour for allowing me to take part today and for sending me a eArc of the book to read for my review today.
At first I was a little confused because the book does flip back and forth from the past to present. It takes you through the first break up to the last one.
Craig is your typical guy who is into Dungeons and Dragons and comic books. I instantly liked and could relate to Craig because he is that guy you see at school who is awkward and uncomfortable and you know he is not the kind of guy who would never get the popular girl except in his dreams but you still root for him just the same because you want the under dog to get something just once in his life right especially when your twin sister seems to get all the luck in everything she touches. She is the complete opposite of Craig.
Enter Amy said girl that ends up on again off again dating Craig. What Craig doesn’t realize is that yes Amy might be popular but there is more to her then she lets on and when he finds all this out will he still want to be with her?
Amy and Craig is on again off again more times then you can count and towards the middle of it I have to admit I was getting over it and just wished Craig would put his foot down and say enough is enough I can’t do this anymore. But he loves her so much that I wondered how much more could he take?
Looking back now as I write the review this is very typical of a high school romance/situation and I think young adults would get this book much more then I would now.
This is a debut novel and I am excited to read more of his books in the future.