Review: Tonight the Streets are Ours by Leila Sales

Tonight the Streets are Ours is a love story. Because if it wasn’t, what would be the point?

Arden is a small town girl living a small town life. She has a group of dedicated friends, she has a comfortable home, a safe boyfriend and a beat up old car. The most exciting thing to ever happen to her was being made into a doll (yes, literally). Until her mother walks out of their house one day, and doesn’t come back.

Now Arden is looking at the relationships she has with the people in her life in a different light. Could it be that she loves her friends more then they love her back? Is she too ‘recklessly loyal?’ While aimlessly searching for answers to her questions Arden stumbles across a blog called Tonight the Streets are Ours, in which a boy the same age as Arden expresses the same worries about his own life after his brother goes missing. Arden quickly finds herself becoming obsessed with reading every post on Peter’s blog, reading about his life and his relationship with his girlfriend and his brother. Soon Arden has caught up with his blog and is reading in real-time but then Peter posts that his blog is going to be published as a real-life book.

Worried that Arden’s shot at making an impression on Peter will soon be lost (after-all, she’ll soon be one of thousands of girls reading about his life) Arden and her best friend Lindsay travel to New York to track Peter down.

I love happy endings, but I think a big part of me also like the ‘we only met for one day, but in that time we touched each-others’ lives in ways we’ll never be able to untangle or erase afterwards’ storylines as well. Tonight the Streets are ours encapsulates this perfectly. It’s a bittersweet tale of a girl working out how she wants to be treated by the people in her life, and how things are always a lot more complicated then they seem. It’s a coming of age novel, a bit like a Paper Towns by John Green meets Nick and Norah’s infinite playlist, lots of crazy, lot’s of friendship, and lot’s of complications.

Arden’s story is believable too, her life isn’t special or overly exciting. She has normal life goals, normal friends and a normal family, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t special or individual. Leila Sales didn’t have to put any of the other characters down so that Arden could seem more superior or important, which is always good.

This book made me feel a lot of emotions as well, I was sad, frustrated, disappointed and happy all within the 300 pages.

It isn’t a book that is going to change my life, but I really did enjoy it.

I’m giving this book 4/5 ice creams.