Review of Everything Leads To You by Nina LaCour

Format: eBook
Genres: romance, contemporary, lgbt
Pages: 320
Publisher: Dutton Children's
Release Date: 15/05/2014
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A love letter to the craft and romance of film and fate in front of - and behind - the camera from the award-winning author of Hold Still.

A wunderkind young set designer, Emi has already started to find her way in the competitive Hollywood film world.

Emi is a film buff and a true romantic, but her real-life relationships are a mess. She has desperately gone back to the same girl too many times to mention. But then a mysterious letter from a silver screen legend leads Emi to Ava. Ava is unlike anyone Emi has ever met. She has a tumultuous, not-so-glamorous past, and lives an unconventional life. She’s enigmatic... She’s beautiful. And she is about to expand Emi’s understanding of family, acceptance, and true romance.

Let's not lie to each other, there's a very strong chance that if you have a copy of this or have read it, you were drawn in by it's seriously gorgeous cover. I know I was! I'd previously read Hold Still and rated that 5 stars so if that wasn't enough to push me to read it after seeing the cover, John Green (yes that one) recommended it on his vlog and I picked it up immediately. Everything Leads To You is a unique love story set in the world of movie making and set design, aimed more at older teens, the main characters being eighteen. 

Unlike a lot of books with gay relationships, this book isn't about coming out. When we first meet Emi, she's getting over yet another break-up - from the same girl that has dumped her countless times and then taken her back. Emi is a very passionate character, she's a romantic at heart and falls in love easily, which might explain why she keeps taking Morgan back. Morgan was an odd character, Emi's descriptions of her and the way she actually acted felt like two different things, the real life Morgan felt a lot older and wiser. Emi's other passion is her job as a set designer and she'll willingly travel to garage sales, estate sales, whatever it takes to find a piece of furniture or a certain chair that she's envisioned for the set.

I found the world of set design utterly fascinating. I had a vague idea that set designers existed but Emi really opened up my eyes to how much work each set must take. I loved traveling around with her looking for the perfect prints or sofa for her set and I think it must be a wonderful job, if very tiring! I'll be paying a lot more attention to the sets I see on the television from now on, this book taught me a lot.

The main focus of this book (as well as the set design), was a mystery. Emi's friend Charlotte picks up a Patsy Cline record while they're at an estate sale for one of Hollywood's most famous actors (who completely doesn't exist in our world), and when they go home to play it a letter falls out of it, addressed to a woman named Caroline. After extensive research, the girls find out that Caroline has passed away, but her daughter Ava is still alive.

I knew pretty quickly into the story that Emi would fall in love with Ava. It was a pretty predictable story, sorry. Nothing surprised me! I liked Ava, at the same time as feeling that I didn't really know her. However Emi seemed to feel the same way so maybe that was how she was supposed to be written. There were hints of her anger and despair when she found out how her mother had died, and I wish that we could have seen this side of Ava more often, as when she was around she just seemed a little... blank. I really enjoyed her story about her previous relationship though.

This story is lovely and I definitely recommend it for fans of John Green who are looking for a light read. It's filled with lots of lovely quotes and descriptions that kept me reading - I actually finished this within 24 hours! There was one particular story about a florist that was really sweet, I know I'll remember that for a long time.