Blurb:

In this moving story two teens fall in love with just one minor complication—they can’t get within five feet of each other without risking their lives. Can you love someone you can never touch? Stella Grant likes to be in control—even though her totally out of control lungs have sent her in and out of the hospital most of her life. At this point, what Stella needs to control most is keeping herself away from anyone or anything that might pass along an infection and jeopardize the possibility of a lung transplant. Six feet apart. No exceptions. The only thing Will Newman wants to be in control of is getting out of this hospital. He couldn’t care less about his treatments, or a fancy new clinical drug trial. Soon, he’ll turn eighteen and then he’ll be able to unplug all these machines and actually go see the world, not just its hospitals. Will’s exactly what Stella needs to stay away from. If he so much as breathes on Stella she could lose her spot on the transplant list. Either one of them could die. The only way to stay alive is to stay apart. But suddenly six feet doesn’t feel like safety. It feels like punishment. What if they could steal back just a little bit of the space their broken lungs have stolen from them? Would five feet apart really be so dangerous if it stops their hearts from breaking too?

Review:

This book got progressively better as it continued on. At first, I was not a big fan of the relationship between Stella and Will, the main characters. They were instantly attracted to each other because of their looks, which sparked a beginning for the story, but wasn’t all that enjoyable to read about. 

There is a pretty unrealistic scene where Stella offers to make a deal with Will because she can’t stop thinking about how he won’t take his medications: Will will take his medicine in return for getting to draw Stella. This is pretty weird because Stella doesn’t even know this guy and yet she’s so obsessed with him not taking his medicines because she doesn’t want him to die, but who would let a random stranger draw them? Let them at least have a normal conversation so they can learn more about each other before letting them get so close and personal. But then, after Poe, Stella’s best friend and also a cystic fibrosis patient, befriends Will, is where things start getting better. I realized that although Stella and Will had a rocky start in their relationship, the overall development of it was actually pretty healthy. In the end, I truly admired their relationship and really liked to read how they would fight against cystic fibrosis together. I also thought the writing was quite immersive and really great at capturing the main character’s thoughts and emotions. For example, the part where Poe suddenly died was really well done, because the mental breakdown that Stella was experiencing from losing her best friend was so raw and well-written that it captured the scene vividly. The themes done on family were also well captured, and the side characters were all very likable and yet had their flaws. One of the main things that bothered me in this book, however, is how the main characters managed to sneak out and around the hospital so many times. The book makes it sound like Barb and Julie are the only nurses that exist in that hospital, and everyone else is gone and only appears when someone is dying or having surgery. But overall, this was a very enjoyable read even though I know it’ll never happen in real life, not because it’s about two cystic fibrosis patients falling in love, but more rather the situation that makes it impossible for any of this to happen if they were in a hospital.