Elevated by Elana Johnson

Here's a great YA contemporary romance for all you romance readers. :) I love me a romance, and this one does not disappoint.

Don't be afraid of the fact that Elevated is written in verse. I'll be the first person to admit that I don't like poetry. Nothing wrong with it for those who love it--it's just not my thing. But my lack of love for anything in verse did nothing to stop me from loving this book. It's fantastic.

Here's the premise:


Getting stuck on an elevator with your ex will really get your heart rate ELEVATED...

The last person seventeen-year-old Eleanor Livingston wants to see on the elevator—let alone get stuck with—is her ex-boyfriend Travis, the guy she's been avoiding for five months.

Plagued with the belief that when she speaks the truth, bad things happen, Elly hasn’t told Trav anything. Not why she broke up with him and cut off all contact. Not what happened the day her father returned from his deployment to Afghanistan. And certainly not that she misses him and still thinks about him everyday.

But with nowhere to hide and Travis so close it hurts, Elly’s worried she won’t be able to contain her secrets for long. She’s terrified of finally revealing the truth, because she can’t bear to watch a tragedy befall the boy she still loves.


Elly is stuck on an elevator with the boy she loves but is trying to avoid. How can this not have the romantic tension we all love to read, what we romance readers crave to read? Elana does an amazing job making the scenes come to life and helping her readers feel the tension and desires both to run away from Trav and wrap him up in our arms.

Elana weaves past with present in a brilliant way. I always understood where and when the characters were as Elly's story and secrets unfold. And a few pages in, I forgot the whole thing was written in poetry. The words were so beautiful (and easy for me to understand, because let's face it, the main reason I'm not a reader of poetry is how complicated it can be) that I lost myself in them. 

I loved the characters, loved the story, and tried not to cry at the events that were heartbreaking.

The last one I totally failed at.

I'd rather read this book than eat chocolate. Or should I say, I'd rather read this book THEN eat chocolate, because chocolate and crying kind of go together. :) 

If you love YA and/or romance, you should really try this one. It's worth every minute you take to read it.

Rynn