I thought this would be awesome. (Warning, minor spoilers and swearing, unless goodreads auto-censors?)
To be fair, this is a DNF for me.
Additionally, here I am breaking my rule about trashing other indie authors online. However, I'm doing this an exercise for myself. I enjoy determining what worked and what didn't work for me when I read a book. I use what I find to help me write better books. So I'm only writing this review because I want to explore what did work about the 40% of this book that I read, even though it had no effing right to work.
Okay, for starters, the book is a walking, talking lump of cliches, right? You've got the virgin 21 year old and the asshole boy toy who sleeps around.
Oh, but they're best friends from childhood, so that somehow makes it not some Glines/McGuire clone.
Hell, Abbi Glines writes better than this chick, and that is not saying much.
'Kay, so for some reason, though, it WORKS. Like, it's so stilted and the dialogue is awful and unrealistic and there are seven adverbs on every page and everyone apparently has a constant sore throat, because they are all talking hoarsely.
But the sexual tension--while utterly unrealistic--is powerful.
So what does the idiot author do?
She takes the ONLY thing she has going for her, the will-they/won't-they of Ryder and Maddie, and she has them fuck.
And then...
Oh, and then Ryder's like, "No, I don't want to date. I don't date girls. I'm the asshole playboy stereotype, remember?"
But it's obvious that he actually likes her and is just in denial.
Then the WORLD EXPLODES.
This was the part I had been hoping for. I was like, yay, there will be danger and tension and excitement.
But I found myself skimming, and I stopped reading, because I didn't care about the characters and Ryder and Maddie were practically together at that point, so I wasn't even curious about how the relationship would pan out.
How could the author have fixed this?
1-Real characters in a believable situation might have garnered my sympathy. Stereotypes? Eh. Let 'em die.
2-If you can't manage to make real people (and let's face it, some of the best stories out there feature cardboard cutout characters. I'm a Star Wars fan. I like horror movies. I watched Titanic. You can pull off a good story without great characters.) then, by all means, do not SCREW UP the one decent piece of tension you've got going for you.
Listen, would-be romance authors.
In a romance novel, they typically have sex AT THE END.
If they have sex earlier, their having sex needs to create MORE PROBLEMS.
NO TENSION=NO STORY
Blah.
A book about two people in danger, barely managing to stay alive, who also are attracted to each other, but won't give in to their attraction for some reason or other? That's a plot I NEVER get tired of.
They had sex too soon.