A Little Something Different by Sandy Hall

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Macmillan for providing me with this e-copy. 

Pages: 272

Publisher: Swoon Reads (Macmillan Children's Books)

Released: 26th of August 2014

The creative writing teacher, the delivery guy, the local Starbucks baristas, his best friend, her roommate, and the squirrel in the park all have one thing in common—they believe that Gabe and Lea should get together. Lea and Gabe are in the same creative writing class. They get the same pop culture references, order the same Chinese food, and hang out in the same places. Unfortunately, Lea is reserved, Gabe has issues, and despite their initial mutual crush, it looks like they are never going to work things out.  But somehow even when nothing is going on, something is happening between them, and everyone can see it. Their creative writing teacher pushes them together. The baristas at Starbucks watch their relationship like a TV show. Their bus driver tells his wife about them. The waitress at the diner automatically seats them together. Even the squirrel who lives on the college green believes in their relationship. 

Surely Gabe and Lea will figure out that they are meant to be together....

What I Have to Say 

This book, without a doubt, is the best romance I have ever read. 

With Romance a very important part of the appeal is wanting the characters to succeed and live happily ever after. Which is part of the reason I don't read that many romance books. Quite often I just don't care about whether the characters end up together or not. But I definitely, definitely wanted Gabe and Lea to get together and was getting as frustrated as the other characters in the book when they kept dancing around each other. 

I think that this is partly down to the way it's written, and also just the adorableness of Gabe and Lea as a couple, naturally. The different perspectives and the way they all start shipping Gabe and Lea, trying to push them together, just seemed to make it so easy to fall into the obsessiveness that is Gabe and Lea watching. 

The perspectives are really wonderful. It's a very fresh way of reading romance, as the title suggests. I found myself really liking some of the more obscure characters, the bus driver, Victor and the squirrel. I really think that the squirrel was the best one. Though I am a sucker for animal points of view in general. I did think at one point that maybe Gabe and Lea would take in the squirrel and help him recover from his starvation over the winter when he lost his acorns, but I guess their help was not needed in the end (it would have been cute though). 

I can't honestly think of a single thing not to love about this book, except perhaps that I wish there had been more of it (but then that might have been more of Gabe and Lea being shy and taking even longer to get together. Torture!), Just go and read it, because it's definitely one of the best books I've ever read.