Review: Romantic and sweet, but needed a little more...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 10, 2012
I went back and forth about what my rating would be for this one, because this book left me very conflicted.  I enjoyed Noah's story and was looking forward to Gio, but it was not at all what I was expecting.  It had the feel of a story that was trying to be like Thoughtless only wrapped up into a shorter book, so it took me by surprise.  This wasn't your standard romance with the characters falling immediately in lust and not able to keep their hands off each other.  It was more of a slowly-developing forbidden love where the characters fought the temptation to be together for a long time, before finally realizing that their feelings were much more than they expected.I actually really liked the slow build-up, even though it didn't flow as well as longer contemporary novels do just because of the lack of time for details and time lapsing.  Gio completely blew me away, I just adored him even more than I did Noah.  He was unbelievably sweet and loving towards Bianca and developed a believable bond with her.  Bianca was likable with her fearless attitude toward her feelings with Gio and I really loved them together.  Their romance just felt right, though the obvious moral issue of their behavior did affect how I felt about them as a whole.  The concept here was similar to Thoughtless, but in Gio there was much less time for those feelings to develop and play out so I didn't have as strong of an emotional attachment to the characters.  I did like the way they made each other feel, the chemistry between Gio and Bianca was off the charts, and at least in "Gio" there's a sense of Bianca deserving better than what Felix was giving her anyway.  Obviously that doesn't give them a pass to have sex behind Felix's back, but ultimately I wasn't too upset for him in the end.Overall I enjoyed this one a lot.  There was a surprising lack of steamy scenes in this story, and the ones it had were lackluster compared to some (More Than Meets the Ink and Heavy Issues, which I recently read, made this pale in comparison) but I still enjoyed the romance as a whole.