Taken By Storm by Angela Morrison

Title: Taken by Storm
Author: Angela Morrison
Publisher: Razorbill (Mar. 5, 2009)

Seventeen-year-old Leesie Hunt has rules: No making out. No sex. And definitely no falling for a non-Mormon. She pours all her passion into poetry, thoughts of escaping her tiny town and getting into her dream school, BYU.

Then Michael Walden arrives in Tekoa and everything changes. He is a free diver, which means he can hold his breath for minutes at a time. This is how he survived the storm that took his parents' lives, and the world as he knew it.

Leesie and Michael couldn't be more different: his dreams are tied to the depths of the ocean and hers to salvation above. Yet they are drawn to each other, even when jealousy, unbearable rules, and haunting memories threaten to tear them apart.

Every time Michael goes diving, Leesie is afraid he'll never come back up. he is drowning in tragedy and she knows it's up to her to save him. Somehow.

But when temptation becomes too strong to resist, who is going to save her?*

---

I started this book at school this morning, and I could tell from the start that it wasn't going to be good. I pushed myself to read the first couple chapters. The third was slightly better than those, the fourth a little better than the third. And on and on it went, each chapter getting a little better than the previous one... and then, it hit full blast, and I was hooked. After I got home, I sat for two and a half hours and read straight to the end. (Thank goodness I hadn't started reading any later or I would not have gotten much sleep.) 

The book is narrated in two perspectives: Leesie's and Michael's. Leesie's sections are all in poems (which I fell in love with) and Chatspot (IM) logs, while Michael's are Dive Logs (basically just him narrating). I found that the transitions were smooth, and because of the format, I always knew who was narrating (sometimes I get confused with books like this). 

Everything about this book (except for the first few chapters) was simply amazing. The plot (although not super original), the characters, the dialogue, the everything. 

Maybe I'm just a sucker for romance, but I fell hard for this. There's no doubt that I'll be buying this the next time I'm at a bookstore, and I recommend it fully. Turns out I was right: It wasn't good... It was incredible.**

*summary from inside jacket

**I really wanted to add this in, but couldn't figure out where to put it, so I just added it in down here.

"The world spins, the starts shift, and I can't see anything except his smoky gray eyes gazing into mine.

You scare me, whispers from my mouth across his. 

Good, he breathes into me. I need you to save me."

(from back cover of hardback)