Art & Soul Paperback – May 25, 2015

Art & Soul is a beautifully written story about two teenagers trying to navigate and survive adult situations. This story made me laugh, ugly cry and the end left me with a huge smile on my face.Aria is an artist, she is used to being one of the oddities and enjoys going unnoticed in her high school. She has her art and her best friend, she doesn’t need or want anything else. Levi has been living in Alabama with his mother, but has just moved to Wisconsin to live with his dad. He is the opposite of Aria, when he walks into the room people notice him, they want to know him.As the school starts Aria and Levi quickly learn that one decision can change your whole life, it can shape your future into something you no longer recognize. Aria is no longer the girl no one notices, she is the girl they are all talking about. Then there is Levi, has uprooted his whole life to try and understand why he and his dad no longer have the relationship they used to. He wants answers on what happened and to try to repair their broken relationship.Levi immediately sees Aria. He sees that she is beautiful, unique and sad. He wants to know her, he wants to make her smile. Aria can’t help but notice Levi. The whole school sees Levi, so she can’t understand why he is only seeing her. She is closed off and afraid of getting to know him, but when they’re paired together for their Art & Soul project they are forced to get to know each other.“Your personality is the complete opposite of your looks.”“I know that my personality is outstanding, so I’ll go ahead and pretend that you didn’t just call me ugly.”As time goes on Levi and Aria develop a friendship and help each other through difficult times. There is so much character growth throughout the story and I absolutely loved watching them open up and accept comfort in each other.Levi Myers is one of my most favorite characters I have ever read. He is selfless, loving, compassionate, and real. He isn’t perfect, but it just made me love him more. He is a child having to act like a parent. He is a teenage boy who sees past people’s differences to the heart of the matter. What I love the most, he is a teenage boy who sees past social norms and beats to his own drum."He was the best kind of oxymoron. When I was with him I could be a sad kind of happy and be content with the feeling."Aria is beautifully unique. She isn’t as mature as Levi, but throughout the story she really grew as a character. She is faced with one of the most difficult choices and she handles it with maturity and grace. While Levi stole my heart in the beginning, by the end, Aria owned it. She was completely selfless, giving and understanding. She was completely refreshing.The world was often ugly and painful, filled with hate, sadness and despair. But Aria? She made sense in a senseless world.It is rare for me to love the side characters as much as the main, but Simon, Abigail, and even the parents added so much to the story. This story is full of heart and depth. Most importantly it is real life.I loved Brittainy Cherry before I picked up this book. She wrote one of my favorite reads, Loving Mr. Daniels, so I couldn’t wait to read this story. I didn’t expect this story to move me like LMD, but it did. These stories are so different, but contain the same ingredients: heart and soul. This story moved me to tears multiple times, not just sad tears, but happy tears. That is crazy, I don’t usually cry happy tears in a book, but by the time I finished this story the characters were real to me.There are not enough words to express how much I loved this story. I am sure Levi, the word master, would do a much better job. I will close with this. This is a story that I will read again and again, it is a story I never wanted to end, it is a story I hope everyone reads.

Where to start with this one . . . I’ve read my first Brittainy C. Cherry book earlier this year – Loving Mr. Daniels – and I instantly fell in love with her incredible and moving writing. After finishing that book I told myself, this is what reading a good book should leave you like: content and in awe. But little did I know she’ll write Art & Soul and make me fall in love with her all over again.Art & Soul is one of those rare books that made me smile and cry at the same time – and they weren’t happy tears, they were ‘the sad tears of a clown’. She ripped my heart out but by the end it was patched back together. I can’t say a lot about the plot as it has some ‘spoilery’ qualities, but I’ll try the best I can.The book follows Levi and Aria and their friendship story. Told in dual POV, we first get to meet Levi who’s moving to a different state in order to reconnect with his absent father and to get a bit of distance between himself and his doting mother. Then we are introduced to Aria and her family and we get to share in the ‘little’ secret she’s been withholding from them. The first meeting between the two is unexpected – he’s holding berries for a deer to eat. That’s Levi for you – he’s the handsome, ‘boy-next-door’ savior. From that moment on they start meeting frequently, either in the bus stop or at school and are even thrown into a school project together – Aria’s a talented painter and Levi plays the violin. It’s because of this that they connect and form a tight bond. From here on out we follow them on their journey of self discovery – they go to school, hang out with friends, have little fights, but in the end nothing matters. All the little things we get so concerned about are just a speck of dust in the grand scheme of life as they all realize in the end.The writing – there aren’t enough praise words to use for this author. She reminds of Colleen Hoover in her early days. Brittainy’s prose is poetic and imaginative – her character and nature descriptions are so vivid and rich that I feel like I’m a part of the world she describes. All her protaginists are approachable, the kind of people someone might have as friends in real life. Her use of old and modern references doesn’t turn the dialogue into something cliche, more than often it made me go look them up (I’ve learned more Marc Aurelius quotes now than in school) and in a weird way touched my heart.For me this is a 5++++ star read. ‘Art & Soul’, I’ll cherish and ‘I love you till the end’.

5 Brilliantly Written, Moving, Deep, Emotional Stars!OMG, I am an emotional mess right now! Yep, you guessed it, please have tissues handy while reading this book, omg...... there are no real words to use to describe this beautiful, beautiful heartbreaking and yet heartwarming story!It's a story filled with such powerful emotions on every single level of humanity possible. Between Aria and Levi......these 2 warm, loving, broken and beautiful souls.....oh gosh, did I LOVE them. Their story was so different, so moving, so touching, so full of feelings about love and life and I mean "life".... When I say their story was just...ahhhhh, absolutely amazing and great and yet so freaking sad at the same time..... you just have to read it to truly understand what a unique and awesome story this was! I not only was so immersed with Aria and Levi but ALL of the secondary characters. It was truly a story that had many "leading" characters!I really can't say too much right at this moment because I am a blubbering mess (I can barely see through my tears) but this story was sp much MORE than a love story, it was true love in all it's glory and all it's heartbreak!!!!!!Please, PLEASE, I would love to catch up with this couple, with these families, with Simon and Abigail, too, lol!!!!! I not only want to know more, my heart NEEDS to know how they are doing and what has become of their future, ALL of their futures!!!!!!!!!!!!