Review: In Honor

In Honor
By: Jessi Kirby
Release Date: May 8, 2012

Description:
A devastating loss leads to an unexpected road trip in this novel from the author of Moonglass, whose voice Sarah Dessen says “is fresh and wise, all at once.”Hours after her brother’s military funeral, Honor opens the last letter Finn ever sent. In her grief, she interprets his note as a final request and spontaneously decides to go to California to fulfill it.

Honor gets as far as the driveway before running into Rusty, Finn’s best friend since third grade and his polar opposite. She hasn’t seen Rusty in ages, but it’s obvious he is as arrogant and stubborn as ever—not to mention drop-dead gorgeous. Despite Honor’s better judgment, the two set off together on a voyage from Texas to California. Along the way, they find small and sometimes surprising ways to ease their shared loss and honor Finn’s memory—but when shocking truths are revealed at the end of the road, will either of them be able to cope with the consequences?  

Review:
The author took me on an emotional roller coaster and I was enjoying the ride the entire time.  Within the first chapter it already had me in tears, then moved on to joy and anger, finally leading me towards a feeling of freedom for the main character Honor.

We start off with Honor trying to be strong at her brother's funeral, who recently passed away while over sees fighting in the war.  She never understood why he joined the marines or how he could leave her alone the way he did.  After the funeral and everyone was gone she received a letter from him, he had no idea of knowing she would be finding it after he already passed.  In his letter he sent her tickets to go see their favorite singer.  So she comes up with this big idea to leave for college later than she expected and follow his last wishes by going to California.  As she's packing her brother's ex best friend Rusty is standing by her drunker than usual and passes out in her car.  So she takes him on this ride with her.

They go through different stages throughout the road trip and it's all very great.  She learns why her brother did some things he did and also some things she didn't know about.  The ride was an eye opener for her and how her brother felt about her, the amount of goodness in him is just so much, who knew there could be people like that really.  So Rusty is constantly having to remind himself of just how grown up Honor really is.  It's all very sweet the way they interact with each other.  Sure I wanted some big reveal of how they belong together, but in due time maybe it will happen.  But for now they learn more about each other and help each other grieve through her brother's loss. 

This story overall was really great, it had me crying, laughing, cringing and deep sighing throughout the whole thing.  The author really knows how to bring out the emotion in people and the characters I thought were really great.  Sure there's some things I wished happened but maybe it's for the better we can't always have that picture movie perfect ending in every book.  This was more realistic and I really enjoyed it.  The ending was open ended, so much could happen afterwards.  But that will have to be lead to our imaginations as this was a standalone. 

The cover is perfect because they talked a lot about Honor's dress wearing boot wearing outfits, It felt all very Texas to me and it's just the right kind of cover.  This is definitely a book I would pick up and read again just to see if I missed anything.  Rusty was adorable and it sounded like he had so much swagger that even I wanted to get on that dance floor with him.  I love guys like that and he had so much hard even if it was a little stubborn at times. Honor too was a great character, she really had no clue about some things, but sometimes people are so self involved they don't realize all the things that are going on around them and how those things came to be.  Great lessons learned in this book.