Review: An entertaining read!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 25, 2014
“I’ll find someone for her, or at least distract her from the slump she’s in and show her a good time…How can I fail?”—CaliCali’s life is perfect—she’s just graduated college, has a great long-term boyfriend, and is heading to Harvard Law. But first, she has to get through the summer making great money at a casino and helping her best friend, Gen, find a great guy. Except, her boyfriend dumps her, she’s having doubts about being a lawyer, her casino job is tenuous, and the guy she’s trying to set Gen up may be the perfect guy for Cali herself. That is, if her perfect guy’s past doesn’t destroy her first…“I thought I had everything figured out…”—CaliI loved this book! It fits the new adult genre nicely and will speak to anyone who knows what it’s like to finish undergrad and having to decide whether to continue onto the path others expect you to take or to find a new path that leads to the unknown. For Cali, she has to choose between continuing what she’s worked so hard for and go to law school or take a completely different path and pursue art. There are many variables she has to consider, and the author presented them well so that we can see how hard the decision could be.As for the romance part, I absolutely love Jaeger and how he’s so totally into Cali, despite her trust issues and uncertainty about what she wants. The romance heat level is about medium with plenty of sexual tension between them—especially since Cali is misguided by being loyal to her unbeknownst-to-her disloyal boyfriend at the start. The author also makes their romance and the barriers between them believable although the ex-girlfriend storyline did get a bit far-fetched and crazy towards the end. Since the two of them knew each other before (Jaeger is Cali’s brother’s old friend), there was a bit of crushing one each other with their younger selves.The one thing I’m torn about is that since this is the start of a series, we have many other subplots between characters going on that I can only assume will star in their own future novels in the series. There’s plenty of build up but no resolution on those plot lines, so that was frustrating in that I wanted to know more but know I have to wait. I especially want to know what happens with Cali’s best friend, Gen! While Cali is open and honest with a sarcastic and sassy voice with a flair for exaggeration (which made her character voice fun to read since told by her to us as if we are friends), Gen seems more vulnerable with room to grow in the confidence department. Cali, on the other hand, has the confidence in her intelligence and ability to be independent. Leaps of faith and accepting help though? Well, she’s working on that, and Jaeger’s doing his best to help her.Overall, this is an entertaining read where we get to see Cali go from up high to down low, then high and then low and then high—well, she does work in a Casino so to win big you need to risk a lot! And trust me, getting Jaeger counts as a big win. 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.)