Review: 3.5 Sweet Stars
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 8, 2014
I found this to be a sweet book of friendship, betrayal, forgiveness and love.We have a story of childhood best friends who become lovers.  Now I love this scenario, but what happens between Lucas and Melinda (in the prologue), I found a little heartbreaking myself.We have Lucas who is gorgeous, popular, high school star quarterback, and an idiot for keeping his friendship with Melinda a secret from his “popular friends”.  But still crawls into her window every night to talk to his Lindy Lou.Melinda (Lindy Lou) is sweet, smart, overweight and not popular at all.  She’s bullied at school (called piglet) and Lucas doesn’t even stick up for her – I mean, I know how stupid teenagers can be, but I wish Lucas had of shown some balls and defended her.  She came across really nave and too forgiving of Lucas all the time.  She accepted his friendship anyway he provided it to her because she was secretly in love with him.Tara is Melinda’s best friend who is a sexy, cool band geek and has always been there for Melinda.  And Daniel is thrown in the mix as well.  He’s Lucas’ friend and later Tara’s boyfriend.We also have an array of over loving and protective parents who are all really supportive of their children.Lastly throw in one crazy ex-girlfriend, Kelsey, who really is a psycho.In the Prologue….Melinda is talked into going to her first ever high school party, the night before they leave for college.She is taunted by the girls at the party and runs to the bathroom and locks herself in and begins to cry.  Little does she know that Lucas is in there, all drunk and gorgeous.  He asks Lindy Lou what’s wrong and they exchange a moment where he takes her virginity, I really didn’t see this coming….It sort of shocked me actually and brought a tear to my eye - that Lucas would do such a thing and leave her there.  She leaves the party, feeling embarrassed and humiliated again, due to more taunting by the girls and Lucas doesn’t even stick up for her.  What an A#@%H#$@.I really felt for Melinda during this scene and really wished she would kick Lucas’ ass.  But she was just too nice for that.She leaves for college the next day, heartbroken and never looks back.  She tries to move on with her life and does nothing to make contact with Lucas or deal with what happened.And so Lucas moves on with his life.Fast forward 4 yearsThere has been no contact between the two in 4 years and she is back home.  She’s fit, fabulous, sexy and gorgeous after losing 60 pounds.Their first encounter brings back all their feelings for each other.  Lucas knows in that moment that he has to win her back.  But still, they don’t speak about what happened in the past in that first instance.  They eventually do and Lucas is forgiven all to easily by Melinda.From the moment these two lay eyes on each other again, you just know where the story is headed.  Lucas becomes an alpha male all protective over Melinda and tells her he loves her and has always loved her and that she is his.Lucas’ career didn’t turn out so great with an injury that kept him out of playing football so he fixes bikes now.  He has a history of one night stands and is portrayed as the town man whore.  Not to mention the psycho ex Kelsey that keeps hanging around.  She is the biggest bitch who taunted Melinda her whole high school life and still does it as well as taunting everyone else.I just wish that Melinda was a little stronger willed when it came to Lucas.  She was really way too forgiving.  I know she has loved Lucas like forever, but I wanted to see more angst and drama between the two of them and not through different scenarios in the plot.  I was hoping that the ex-boyfriend would have played a bigger role in the story.While Lucas and Melinda work on their relationship, there are a number of violent break ins occurring throughout the town.  The plot was really easy to figure out with guessing who the Mirror Man was.  Every victim was linked to Lucas in one way or another.The story pans out with a few twists and turns which, like I said earlier, were easy to figure out, but Lucas and Melinda get their beautiful HEA.I did enjoy reading this and look forward to reading Tara and Daniels’ story in Book 2 – Doors.