Review: Tonight the Streets Are Ours - Leila Sales

Tonight the Streets Are Ours
Leila Sales
Series: N/A
Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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Tonight the Streets Are Ours is actually a really great book, while I had some personal issues with it.

The book begins with Arden Huntley, who is 17 and "recklessly loyal," -- let me just say right now that the beginning of the book and character introductions and the voice of the narrator, everything in the beginning was flawless. I don't want to give away a-not-so-important plot point that happens in the beginning just because I really loved the way it was written and I can't do it justice.

Anyways, so Arden is loyal. Arden has a best friend, Lindsey. You can probably guess what happens next: Arden swoops in to save Lindsey, "drowning herself in the process." The backlash from this is that Arden realizes how she is the one to care the most or do the most in her relationships, and faces a lil existential crisis because of it.

She does some random googling which leads her to a blog, "Tonight the Streets Are Ours," run by this kid Peter who lives in New York City. She becomes obsessed with this kid's personal blog, going all the way back to the beginning and reading all the posts.

Alright, then the plot gets a little messy and the characters all get really annoying, in which they make bad decisions and I hate them all (these are the so called "personal issues of mine"). But to be fair to Sales, this book's character representation was honestly super accurate of reality. I know people in real life that are this crazy and obnoxious and would make the decisions that happened in this plot.

The best thing I can say about the messy nature of this plot is it actually seems like the characters were driving the choices. It felt like Sales built some really complex characters and let them make their own choices, the choices that felt right for them, rather than constructing a realm in which it feels like the choices are made for them. It made me feel as though I was actually experiencing the story, rather than watching it happen.

Also, the character development in this piece is solid. There is very little I can say here other than I loved the classification of this book as a love story, and that I don't want to give anything else away, so please read the book!

- Amrutha

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