Review: Started out great, but then fell flat....
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 5, 2014
I am sorry to say that this series did not live up to the hype for me.  I went into it anticipating so much and was blown away by the prequel book, but after that the story quickly ran out of steam for me. Sadly I DNF the series.  Here is my breakdown of what I did read:Not Today, But Someday:  Since I purchased the series as a bundle and this prequel was the first book in the bundle, I read it first and LOVED it! The writing was flawless.  The story was told from alternating POV, and the character development was excellent. I felt like I got to know Emi and Nate so well in this story.  It took place somewhere in the mid-90's, which is when I was a teenager too, so I loved when they talked about music and pop-culture that was relevant at the time. I loved their friendship.  I loved the chemistry and tension between them. I loved all of the secondary characters as well. This book was a solid 5 stars for me and really set my expectations high for the rest of the series.Book 1: Right from the start, Book 1 fell short for me. The characters just did not have the dimension in this book that they had in Not Today, But Someday.  Almost all of the book was told from Nate's POV and he was written to be a love struck fool, almost bordering on being a stalker.  Throughout the entire book he is Emi's doormat, pining away for her page after page, while she literally treats him like she couldn't care less whether he is in her life or not. I lost track of how many times in the book she abruptly got angry at him for basically no reason and didn't talk to him for months at a time. Is that really how someone would treat their best friend of 13 years?  It was really hard for me to connect to their friendship in this book and see why he was so in love with her because she was nothing but a bitch to him. In the meantime, while he was waiting around for her, (still just pining away), he went through woman after woman and was basically a doormat for every one of them too.  While they used him for his money and pushed him around, he showered them with adoration, flowers, and expensive gifts.  The Nate I fell in love with in the prequel book was gone from this one and replaced by a wimp. I was so frustrated by both characters that I felt like I just rushed through the entire book waiting for them to change into the characters from NTBS.  When it finally happened, it was at the very end of the book, and then the book ends abruptly and on a cliffhanger. I will add that I went into this series blind, but I did read in another review that a major event takes place at the end of Book 1, and halfway through the book, I had a good idea what it was going to be, so the ending of this book was extremely anti-climatic for me.Book 2:  Book 2 picks up where book 1 left off and is written from Emi's POV.  I have to give it to the author that Emi was a lot more likable in this book than in book 1, and the beginning of this book was written with a ton of emotion.  It didn't bring on the tears for me like it did for other readers, mainly because I was so disappointed with the turn of events for our two characters, but it came close. There were several times I was very choked up.  Halfway through the book though, I felt like the story just completely lost its steam. Emi's inner dialogue became extremely repetitive, and it became very clear where the remainder of the story was going once Jack came into the picture, so I just found myself reading for the sake of reading. There was no suspense, there was no question of what was going to happen because it was clear as day, so it just seemed pointless to continue.  I gave up on Book 2 right in the middle and basically pieced together the remainder of the story from other reviews.Book 3: Did Not ReadI am giving the Emi Lost and Found series 2 stars because I really only enjoyed the prequel. For someone else, this may be a 5 star story, but for me it was not. I actually downloaded Not Today, But Someday by itself and plan to keep it in my library because it was so good, but I am sorry that I read the other books.  I wish I had only read NTBS and left Emi and Nate with their whole future waiting for them and the possibility of someday....