Review: Mixed
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 17, 2013
*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*This book was deep. It left me with a lot of conflicting emotions and I'm not really sure where to start.*deep breath* Ok, let's see...The Good:This book dealt with some heavy topics, and it did not try to pretty them up or lessen there reality. Georgia has some serious issues that she is still trying to figure out how to deal with her problems. It's a slow process, but she is making progress and starting to find control. I appreciated that Ms. Bale did not just glance over the issue or make Georgia suddenly all better when Ben entered her life. That is not what would happen in real life, and this book strives to be realistic, at least in that aspect.At the same time, Georgia does find Ben to be a calming presence which I believed. It does not seem unreasonable that Ben could help Georgia relax. It's not the same as making her better, it's just taking a little bit of the load off of her shoulders to make dealing a little easier.I liked that, even though she wasn't honest with Ben, Georgia was at least honest with herself. She was fully aware that she had problems and was trying to deal with them.I liked Ben. I don't know that I loved him. However, I do think he was exactly the type of person that Georgia's character needed which in the grand scheme of the story world, is a much more important thing.The Bad:I didn't like that it took so long for Georgia to tell Ben her secrets, and even that was only because she got to the point where she had to.I hated Kendall. Georgia should just never talk to her or Travis again. Talk about toxic relationships.Even though it was realistic, I didn't really like the way that Matt treated Georgia at times. He just came across as a jerk.I didn't like that Ben seemed to have absolutely no problems. Maybe that's why I didn't totally fall for him? No one's life is that ridiculously perfect without having a skeleton hidden somewhere. Maybe we'll find out in the next book?I wasn't crazy about how Ben and Georgia's relationship developed. They didn't really talk a lot (at least not about important things) because Georgia was so withdrawn and scared of driving Ben away with the truth. They *cough's delicately* found other ways to entertain themselves instead. Then they were confessing their love for each other, and I was like, "You don't love each other! You don't actually know each other!" so yeah, that kind of annoyed me.I struggled a lot with what to rate this one. I finally settled on 4 stars because while there were some things that I really liked/appreciated, there were also some things that just kind of rubbed me the wrong way, keeping it from a full 5 stars.