The Coincidence of Callie & Kayden - Review

The Coincidence of Callie & Kayden (The Coincidence, # 1)

By: Jessica Sorensen

Published: December 13th 2012

336 pages

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary

Source: Personal Kindle Library ($1.99 right now)

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Goodreads description--There are those who don’t get luck handed to them on a shiny platter, who end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, who don’t get saved.

Luck was not on Callie’s side the day of her twelfth birthday when everything was stolen from her. After it’s all over, she locks up her feelings and vows never to tell anyone what happened. Six years later her painful past consumes her life and most days it’s a struggle just to breathe.

For as long as Kayden can remember, suffering in silence was the only way to survive life. As long as he did what he was told, everything was okay. One night, after making a terrible mistake, it seems like his life might be over. Luck was on his side, though, when Callie coincidentally is in the right place at the right time and saves him.

Now he can’t stop thinking about the girl he saw at school, but never really knew. When he ends up at the same college as Callie, he does everything he can to try to get to know her. But Callie is reserved and closed off. The more he tries to be part of her life, the more he realizes Callie might need to be saved.

Jessica Sorensen participates in the writing style that hooks you with bits and pieces early on in the book that hint at troubled times in the past. The narrator, in this case swapping back and forth between Callie and Kayden, mentions an event of the past in a way without going into detail that hooks the reader. Each time I've been able to figure out what the event was, but that doesn't matter. It's the way she leaves you with other questions about the details behind the particular event that keeps you devouring her books in order to find out all the answers to your questions. In my opinion, it's a great writing strategy.

Callie and Kayden have known each other pretty much their whole lives. But they have one of those relationships where they really just lost touch. Each one dealing with traumatic events in their own lives leaves them little able to see each other during that time period. All that changes the night that Callie saves Kayden's life. These two have issues a mile long and this book reminds me somewhat of Beautiful Disaster/Walking Disaster--not in the Travis needs anger management or these two have a completely unhealthy relationship kind of way, but in the fact that both of these people have deep seeded issues. They both have unhealthy ways of coping with emotions. And you would think that putting that together would equal a volatile combination. While we do see some of that, for the most part, Callie and Kayden make each other better--they help to heal the wounds inflicted upon the other.

The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden touches on a LOT of issues, and neither Callie nor Kayden handled their issues very well. It's hard to comment directly upon these subjects because I have never experienced either the events that happened to Callie or Kayden or the paths they took to alleviate their pent up emotions. However, it doesn't take Psych-101-Seth (a character in this book) to figure out that their way of coping was just as unhealthy as the circumstances that were forced upon them. I wish Jessica Sorensen had taken to opportunity at the end of the book to reach out to readers who might be struggling with some of the same circumstances in their own lives and offer them links, phone numbers, or SOMETHING for them to get help--which is ultimately what Callie and Kayden should have done, but didn't.

All in all, I was pretty hooked on The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden and very much look forward to picking up book 2, The Redemption of Callie and Kayden later on this year. I'm giving The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden 4 stars. Have you read it? If so, what did you think? Let me know!