Review: Get ready to fall in love...Multiple times.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 28, 2014
**Warning: there are no spoilers for the first book, Tear, but there will be spoilers for the books after. Read at your own risk if you haven’t read the Seaside series**I freaking love this whole series. I'm going to do a paragraph review for each book. You can read Pull (Book #2) as a standalone, but I HIGHLY recommend reading the whole series in order. It makes more sense, and plus who wouldn't want to read more Rachel Van Dyken. I fell in love with every character in this series. Every. Single. One. Nat, Alec, Demitri, Alyssa, and even Jaymeson. They were so real and relatable. The writing flowed well and made me feel. RVD’s books are always intense (Ruin anyone?), but she continues to shock me with every book she writes."How did this happen in the real world? I always laughed at people who said they liked more than one guy at the same time. Well, what about love? Nobody could tell me what I was feeling wasn’t real. If anything, it was too real, too much, and so fast. I felt like I was drowning.”Tear is the first book in the series and it’s told from Nat’s POV. She lives in a small town in Oregon called Seaside. She thinks she’s ordinary, but her world it turned upside down when Alec and Demetri, the two brothers that make up the infamous AD2, suddenly move to Oregon and start attending her school. They are both drawn to her. They both have dark pasts, and they find themselves being saved by Nat. No one does love triangles like RVD. I swear I was Team Alec. For the most part. Both guys are very well-written and appealing, so I found myself super confused and going back and forth between Alec and Demetri. They were too irresistible with their messed up pasts and secrets. Alec had the tall, mysterious, and brooding thing down pat *swoon*, while Demetri was cocky, playful, and fun. They were super protective of Nat, and did I mention they were rock star brothers (who wrote songs for her)? It was a tough choice for me, err, I mean Nat, but in the end there’s really no contest between being in love with someone and loving someone. It was an emotional rollercoaster, and a great way to start the series off with a bang. I swooned and fell in love so hard. For both boys. And Nat was just so sweet and real. (If you do not want to know who she ends up with, stop here.)“I finally understand what love is. It isn’t rainbows and butterflies. It isn’t always pretty. Sometimes it’s jagged like broken glass, and sometimes it hurts. But love, the type of love that’s real – the love that Demetri has shown me – it’s selfless, it’s persistent. Real love pushes your boundaries, it pulls you until you snap, and then when you think you can’t take anymore, it’s relentless in its pursuit of your body, soul, and heart.”So, Demetri finally let Nat go, and now she and Alec are deliriously in love. In Pull, they leave for LA, and Demetri stays behind to deal with his psychological issues. He gets a job at the taffy store Nat used to work at, singing the taffy jingle on the street corner. This is how he meets Alyssa. Alyssa is as dark and depressing as Demetri. She has a lot of guilt on her shoulders, and like Demetri she is barely going through the motions of life. I think this book was heavier with darker emotions than the first book. No complaints here, it just showcases RVD’s versatility. Just when we thought we knew Demetri… We get Pull. I fell in love with Demetri in a different way. He was just so much more open than Alec. And we see him make lots of effort to move on with his life, thus motivating Alyssa to start living too. Demetri and Alyssa’s story is one of healing, learning to live, moving on, accepting the past for what it is, and letting love in.“Alec, whatever’s going on… you know I’ll always be by your side, right?”“Can you promise me that?”“Alec, you’re acting like the sky’s falling or something. I’m. Right. Here.”“I know.”“But damn if the guy I love isn’t a lifetime away from me. You ask me to promise you I’ll never leave, but it feels a lot like you keep trying to say goodbye.”Shatter is told in Alec and Demetri’s POVs. The tension in this book is unreal. I was sweating and freaking out while reading, just waiting for all the crap to hit the fan. Demetri, Alyssa, Alec, Nat, British actor Jamie Jaymeson, and total b**** Angelica Greene are doing a reality show in Seaside. That can’t end well… We met Angelica in both the previous books, and all she does is cause trouble. This book is no exception. Just when we thought we knew all the Daniels’ boys dirty little secrets, we get totally blindsided by even more of them. So. Much. Drama. The couple most affected was unfortunately, Alec and Nat. We get to see how truly messed up Alec can be. He made me want to punch him in the face sometimes, but I still loved him. He just had some growing up to do. And lots of groveling. Alec has to actually fight for Nat this time. At the end of Tear, Dem kinda just let them be together. After he gets over himself, Alec has to pull all the stops to show Nat what she really means to him.“I’m never giving up on you – I’m loving you forever – here’s my heart, take my soul and my body too. I live and breathe for you – want to die right beside you – hold my hand as we walk through this journey into eternity together.”Forever was the book I thought I would be able to read while actually being able to breathe. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Alec and Demetri take my breath away. The things these boys say and do should be freaking illegal. We see Alec and Nat truly get their happily ever after, and Demetri and Alyssa are having issues because Alyssa wants their final happily ever after too. This book was the perfect fairy tale for both the couples. And we get a nice introduction to Priscilla and Jaymeson, since theirs is the next book in the Seaside series. I would say this is my favorite RVD series, but let’s face it…. Everything she writes is my favorite. They’re just all so romantic! All the couples are depressingly cute, and all the guys are drop-dead swoonworthy. The story lines are unique, the dialogue makes me laugh at times, the one-liners kill me, the emotions own me, and overall, the books are just an experience that everyone should go through. I promise you’ll fall in love every single book.“Our bad choices led us to Seaside, Oregon of all places. But that’s where we found our forever. It made me realize that sometimes forever isn’t where you expect it to be, and that’s okay. Because the best parts of my life have been unexpected, and I wouldn’t change that for the world.”