"Tonight the Streets are Ours" by Leila Sales

This book was not what I expected and I was pleasantly surprised. Frankly I thought this was going to be another fluffy YA romance. So I prepared myself for some mindless reading and dove in not expecting much. This book turned out to be much deeper than I thought. It is about love, but this is not a romance novel. Rather, Sales tackles the subject of what it means to love someone: a friend, a family member, a boyfriend. Does love mean complete and utter surrender of self or as she puts it, "reckless loyalty"; or is an essential part of loving others the love towards oneself. This would include honoring one's own interests, self-respect and allowing others to make mistakes and learn to be independent.

The main character in this book is a seventeen year-old Arden. She has a loving family, a best friend, a nice boyfriend, she is a good student and is well-liked by her peers. However, there is one character trait, from an early age carefully cultivated by her mother, that she keeps struggling with: she calls it giving someone a blank check. This means that once she commits to a friendship or a relationship, she is willing to do pretty much anything to make the other person's life easier.  Her mother struggles with the same issue. Because her entire life has been focused on being the best mother she can possibly be, her husband by definition can never meet her standard of a perfect father/husband. She also feels unappreciated by her family and eventually has to leave them in order to come to a realization that everything in life needs to have a balance. Yes, it is important to care for you kids and to make sure they are safe, but is it really necessary to make every meal from scratch or sew their Halloween costumes?

In the end, Arden does learn some important lessons about friendship and relationships and begins to love herself as much as she loves her friends and family. The issues raised in the novel might seem self-evident and not worthy of a book, but I thought they make a good subject for a YA novel and represent a nice topic of discussion. Many times young people tend to become so co-dependent on their love interest or so desperate for another's approval, that they forget to consider their own interests, sacrifice self-respect and ultimately stop loving themselves. This novel was surprisingly deep and I really enjoyed it. 4 out of 5 stars.