Going Bicoastal

 I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley. These are my honest thoughts. 

You know the Robert Frost poem that ends “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference”? The meaning of the poem is less blaze your own path and more that we justify our choices as the right ones, having no idea what the other path would have revealed. 

Going Bicoastal is very low stakes and feel good. Neither decisions – summer in New York or summer in L.A. – are bad decisions, just different ones. In some ways, but not all, she ends up coming to the same conclusions about her life. While readers might have their preferences as to love interest or location, neither is presented as a bad fate, making this an excellent choice for readers who get the new trend of warm, cozy only set in a YA contemporary romance. 

Confession: When we talk about reading diversely some people will always say, horrifyingly, that they can't relate to people who they deem different from them. I don't usually have this issue, but I do struggle with extroverts! (LOL, not so bad, right?)

Natalya is definitely an extrovert. While having shy moments, it's clear that no matter where she goes she'll make friends. Often rich friends. Whether going to see a band, or being fed at dinner parties featuring a roster of chefs, she will WILLINGLY spend a lot of time with people. I'm triple her age (I need a moment to sit with that) and I have no idea who people meet people, strike up a bond, and effortlessly become friends. Trying might kill me. 

She does like to read, though, which my introverted soul does fully comprehend. 

Natalya is Jewish, and the book – in both realities – makes clear what this means to her, that she values and thinks about traditions without being shackled to them. We read about Shabbat dinner a lot and how it varies by your families community and country of origin. I am always hyped about food descriptions, of which there are plenty. 

Food is about communion, not in the Christian sense, and this very much came into play in Going Bicoastal. When you break bread with someone, especially if you personally baked the bread, you allow them into your circle, you find out more about them, you share bits of who you are right back in time to who you were. This is very apparent in the L.A. time line.

The New York time line is more about how music connects us, which is just as vital, although I ended up feeling like I knew the N.Y. love interest – Ellie – less. Maybe because I never felt her vulnerability as much as I did the L.A. love interest, Adam. 

I'd expected more of the book to be about Natalya hashing out her issues with her mom, especially in the L.A. reality, and that didn't materialize. There just seems to be a vibe that Natalya is old enough to not dwell on the past, and mature enough to move on. Her mother, and this surprised me, didn't seem to in any substantial way change her life at the presence of her daughter. I felt this to be a missed opportunity, but the overall readership might not be invested in that so much as the romance elements and Natalya figuring out what she wants for her life. 

I had a nice time with this story, and the sense that Natalya is destined to be okay no matter what.