Review: Entertaining story with a lackluster ending
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 21, 2012
**SPOILER ALERT**I usually try to not include spoilers in my reviews but I can't talk about this book without addressing my dissatisfaction with the ending (and the build-up to the ending).I really liked Tekla in the beginning. She came across as ambitious, responsible, and mature. But my opinion of her changed pretty quickly when she took a job tutoring two entitled teens, Xander and Gemma. At first, the job seemed completely in character for her; she needed extra money to take care of added financial responsibilities related to her school, room, and board. But when she started the job, she realized that the kids didn't want help with their homework--they wanted her to do it all for them. And their parents and Tekla's boss from the tutoring agency supported that opinion. She whined to herself about how wrong it was, yet she continued to do it anyway.Next thing you know, her job is taking up far more of her time than she expected, thanks to Xander and Gemma's absent parents, and suddenly Tekla is shirking her responsibilities on Law Review as well as in her own studies. So what does she do? She lets her would-be boyfriend Markus--the "good guy" she's not interested in dating--do her work for her. After finishing the semester strong (thanks to Markus), she lands a coveted internship where she is asked to write opinions for a judge--again, hired to do all the work for someone else. It's a depressing premise that in "the real world" it's necessary to sell yourself out just to pay rent.There was a bit of a love triangle involved in the book. Tekla didn't seem to want anything more than friendship from Markus yet fawned over Julian, the personal assistant to Xander and Gemma's famous photographer mother. Julian is the stock "bad boy" whose sole job in the story it is to show Tekla that she really wants the good guy. Julian completely embodies all the ideals Tekla claims to be morally opposed to--selling oneself out for a paycheck. And by all rights, Tekla is "supposed to" end up with Markus in the end, based on the standard love triangle formula. But the author leaves it completely open-ended in the last chapter, referring only to a "boyfriend" but not his name.The author has created some very quirky and memorable characters, each with a strong and distinct voice. I would have liked to have seen more of a conclusion at the end. Based on several other reviews, though, it seems that this novel is perhaps the first of a series...? If so, I'm glad to know that readers may get more of a conclusion to this story. But even so, I'm not sure I'll be picking up book 2.