REVIEW: 180 SECONDS BY JESSICA PARK

 

180 Seconds

Jessica Park

Received from Netgalley

Holy cow! What a beautiful story 180 SECONDS is. I finished reading it with tears in my eyes, a huge lump in my throat, and a big stupid smile on my face. My emotions were all over the place and my heart broke over and over again. What an emotional story that is going to stay with me for a long long time. I’ve never read Jessica Park before, but she is now on my auto buy list of authors and I will read everything she writes. She blew me and my heart away with the this moving story of Allison Dennis.

Allison grew up in foster care and wasn’t adopted out until she was sixteen. Her biological mother and father didn’t want her, they were married to other people. She is very closed off and always anxious, but somehow she manages to go through the motions of going to college. While she is there, she is approached to do a social experiment that will change her life forever. The experiment only lasts for 180 SECONDS and happens to be with Esben Baylor, who is a social media icon, but Allison knows nothing thing about it or him. The video from the experiment goes viral and Steffi flies out from LA to get her to talk to Esben about what he did to her life. He has torn down her walls and she needs to understand why.

Allison only has one friend in her life, Steffi, and she plays a huge role in 180 SECONDS. She grew up in foster care too and has always been a very good friend to Allison. They are more like sisters and it warmed my heart that Allison had her as well as Simon, the man who adopted Allison, in her life. She needed them so badly, as she soon finds out. Simon won my heart from the very beginning of the story and never loses his love for her or his faith in her as well.

After reading 180 SECONDS I’m so excited to read more by Jessica Park. She captivated my heart from the very first page and never let it go. 180 SECONDS is going be that book that after you are finished, you are going to want to share it with everyone. Jessica puts just the right amount of humor in her writing so you aren’t totally falling apart the whole time and will actually find yourself smiling like an idiot at some parts. Then the very next second, you are sobbing! I fell in love with all the characters in this heart breaking but also heart warming story. I love when an author does that to me. Talk about an emotional roller coaster ride……….I really have book hangover right now and I owe it all to Jessica Park!