Hi there! Today I’m sharing in the blog tour for Rebekah Purdy’s HOW TO UNBREAKUP. This contemporary YA Romance is a fun, innocent romantic tale of one girl trying to fix a relationship, without all the Hollywood hijinks. Okay, okay there are a few hijinks.

About the Book:
First rule of breakups: There’s no going back.
For three years, seventeen-year-old Grace Evers has regretted breaking up with Sage Castle.

That day, she lost her boyfriend and best friend. And let’s be honest, it’s impossible to just be friends with the one person who gets you, faults and all, and loved you anyway. It’s impossible not to think about how it felt to be held by him, or the way he looked right before he was about to kiss you with the most perfectly yummy kiss goodnight.

And now that things are over between them, they’ve become strangers to one another. Sage won’t even look at Grace, let alone talk to her!

Breakup life sucks and Grace is utterly miserable, doing whatever she can to ease the pain of losing Sage. She’s spent the better part of high school pretending to be something she’s not and hanging out with people who probably wouldn’t notice if she wasn’t there. Crappy dates, backstabbing friends, and Sage’s cold shoulder have taken their toll.

So when her parents propose going away to their house on Lake Michigan for the summer, Grace is thrilled. No more massively bad dates with horrible kissers or lunch with frienemies. Just three months of swimming,
hiking, and relaxing before senior year starts.

But when Grace learns Sage and his family will be joining them, she readies herself for a totally awkward family vacation of disastrous proportions. How can it be anything but awful if Sage won’t even acknowledge she exists?

This is it, Grace’s last chance to get Sage back and unbreakup.

My Review:
Probably need to check for cavities now; this is a super sweet, innocent YA romance.

Grace and Sage were childhood friends, the best of friends, and each other’s first romance/kiss. They grew up together in wholesome Michigan, with parents who are BFFs and plan joint trips. In eighth grade Sage asked Grace to be his girlfriend, and she agreed, but it got a bit much for her to handle. Her friends complained that she was always with him, and she felt like she didn’t have an identity of her own. Plus, she didn’t really feel ready, anymore, to be in a relationship. And, I felt this was ALL AWESOME. I love when young girls are cool being alone. Grace wanted to maintain their strong friendship, but Sage never talked to her after that, and started skipping their joint family get-togethers.

Three years goes by and neither Grace nor Sage has ever dated anyone. Grace knows she’s still hung up on Sage, but he still holds a grudge. It’s the summer following junior year, and the big surprise vacation is again to link the two families for a summer long rental beach house in the UP (Upper Peninsula). Grace is anxious, seeing Sage again at close quarters, but Sage is hostile. Hell hath no fury like a scorned Sage, it seems.

Sage’s sister, Allie, can clearly see how Grace cares for Sage, however–and Allie knows how depressed Sage was after their break-up, so Allie decides to help Grace win him back. They devise a list of ten tasks that Grace should attempt to unfreeze Sage’s heart, and *hopefully* win him back. Of course this plan is destined to crash and burn…hijinks ensue.

In the meantime, while Grace works up the courage to check off Item 10 on her list (apologize for hurting Sage all those years ago, and confess her deep love), he finds a local girl who is very much interested in him. Lila is a pretty pin-up of a girl who shares none of Sage’s interests, but does captivate his attention. Her elder brother, Logan, is equally attractive, and interested in Grace. Allie insists that this may be helpful (Item 6: Make Sage jealous) but Grace isn’t the mercenary sort. She doesn’t discourage Logan, but she keeps everything friendly, even confiding her true feelings for Sage to a very understanding Logan.

Thing is, as the days and weeks pass, Grace realizes that Sage is happier now, and that he seems to get on well with Lila. Grace completes her task list, leaving it all up to Sage.

Well, this is YA romance, so we get an HEA, but we take the angsty-way around to it.

The story is well-told, with only a few slapstick elements, and a whole lotta good-natured ribbing and family bonding. The tension between Sage and Grace is always high, and this non-courtship is fun to experience. Sage and Grace have a lot of shared history, and rediscovering together it is touching. I like how level-headed Grace is, she doesn’t get catty, or plan sabotage missions against Lila; she simply tries to reconnect with her oldest friend, and hopes that he might see her for the girl who loves him now, not the one who broke his heart before.

Interested? You can find HOW TO UNBREAKUP on Goodreads, and Amazon.

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Good luck, and keep reading my friends!

About the Author