Review: Such an emotional story
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 16, 2014
“I wasn’t going to cower. I’d suffered it in high school. I’d be damned if I was going to be a victim in college.”—OliviaOlivia no longer believes in love; she’s no stupid girl. She plans on spending her freshman year in college working, studying, staying away from boys, and forgetting about the nightmare that was senior year of high school. But when bad boy Braxton comes barreling into her life, coaxing smiles and making her feel again, being a stupid girl in love doesn’t seem bad anymore. The problem? Braxton is pursuing her on a cruel fraternity dare, and she doesn’t know it. Nor does she know that Braxton, the womanizer who doesn’t care about anyone, has fallen head over heels for her…“From the moment Braxton Jenkins knocked into me, nothing else afterward made a bit of sense.”—OliviaOh. My. Goodness…From the heart-breaking prologue, I realized this book was not going to be the simple and carefree Cruel Intentions style book where it’s “bad boy tries to seduce virgin for bet and ends up falling for her”. It’s what the book synopsis suggested, and actually, come to think of it, so does my intro summary for the review. Let’s just say neither of us can express the heart-breaking and emotional ride that this story delivers in a brief summary!OK, so heart-breaking? Well, from the prologue, you’ll see Olivia is a victim of date rape, and this topic is handled respectfully by the author. What’s even more heart-breaking is the aftermath. Imagine having no one but your family support you since your attacker comes from a rich family and seems like an all-American great guy. And worse? The guy was your steady boyfriend of one year and won’t leave you alone.Well, fast forward to the start of college and Olivia is starting over, or at least she thinks that. I loved her from the very start and sympathized with her struggles and admired the strength she had to keep going and start anew. In fact, her quiet strength is what I loved best about her. No matter what people gossiped about her, she tried to hold her head high. When it seemed like her heart was going to be broken again, she held it together, bolstered by her amazing family (who didn’t have many appearances, but when they did—wow!). And what I loved the best is that she was smart by being cautious and not settling for anything less than what she deserved.While Olivia has quiet strength, Braxton on the other hand had plenty of outer strength to balance them out. Braxton’s the kind of guy who punches first to say ‘hi, I see you talking to my girlfriend and me no likey’ and then ask Olivia if the guy is bothering her. At the same time, he’s so charming, and his pursuit of Olivia was entertaining, although that was a bit tempered knowing about the dare that he quickly grew to regret. While I loved his alpha male tendencies, I wish he would have been more open with Olivia about the conflicts threatening to keep them apart. He was so determined to protect Olivia from others that he didn’t realize that he could have just talked to her to prevent her from truly getting hurt before it was too late.And boy did she get hurt. I hated how cruel so many of the characters in this story were! I mean, we’re talking cruel pranks, dreaded viral videos, and spreading vicious half-stories. Luckily, she had her friends (I loved her hilarious roommate), Braxton, her family, and a boat load of inner strength to help her deal with the pain.I did feel like there were some characters that were going to play a bigger role but didn’t, which might have been a red herring by the author. I also wish the people who made Olivia’s life so difficult would have been punished more; it seemed like they got off easy, especially after all the emotional pain they inflicted on her. And the one thing that bugged me is the constant reminder of Braxton’s Boston accent. I don’t mind the accent but there’d be a single italicized word after his quotes, which got annoying after a while and broke the flow for me. For example, looking at a seven paragraph dialogue 22% in and we get: Chowdah, Fahr, and Fahtha added. I can hear the Boston accent already in my mind already so maybe this would be helpful for readers unfamiliar with the accent? Distracting for me.Overall, this was such an emotional story reading about Olivia dealing with past and current demons and Braxton being tamed by someone who can actually see him for who he is. There’s some medium heat level romance scenes, cursing, and alpha males being alpha males violence. This is a 4.5 out of 5 for me!(Originally posted on my blog; I received a review copy in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.)