Review: Fabulous!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 24, 2014
This novel could have driven me bonkers. Nate Jennings has major, major issues--and is absolutely letting them run his life. They're causing him to make career choices as well as personal decisions. They're altering his perception of himself to the point that he believes he will eventually ruin everything--and everyone--he touches. They're making him cause the huge climactic moment of the novel (the plot rollercoaster kind, NOT the one your dirty mind went to. Though, come to think of it, he's got a major role in causing that kind too. It is a Brazen novel, after all. ;)) and when a character's refusal to see things--especially themselves--as they are causes the "big understanding" of the book, it can all go so, so wrong.But it doesn't here. Nicolette Day pulls it off. She has Nate pull it off. And it's believable, and romantic, and...oh, so good.But I'm getting ahead of myself here. I should probably start at the beginning....The first third or so of this novel is fantastic. Nate and Lilly's road trip is all you could want, and more. There's snarky one-liners and amusing banter, and--at least on Lilly's part--some darn funny attempts to get payback on the jerk who left her a year ago after the most amazing night of their lives. (I'm not usually a fan of bathroom graffiti, but well played here, Lilly, well played.) There's a definite sense of nature and fate working against our protagonists, with laugh-out-loud results. The first part of the novel is five stars all the way.Then they arrive at Nate's hometown, where he hasn't been in ten years, and things shift into a more serious mode. The rest of the novel is just as good, don't get me wrong, but you see less of the humorous banter and more of the angst that Nate has been carrying around since the accident that originally sent him stateside. You see the broken Nate close up, and that's the Nate that's pushing everyone away. First, though, we--through Lilly's influence--manage to see inside to the real Nate, the one he hasn't let anyone see, perhaps ever.It's those glimpses that will get us through the dark places in this novel, because if we hadn't seen them, I might have been tempted to toss Nate Jennings across the room out of sheer frustration with him. When he decides to bring out the "It doesn't matter if I do care about her--I'm no good for her" side of him, he practically had me shouting at my ereader. His issues were clearly major and deep, and I didn't see how Day could have him fix them before the novel's end.But she does, thank goodness. Not a magic moment-of-clarity-boom!-it's-all-better kind of fix, but the kind that Nate figures out for himself and pulls off in a believable way. His doing so led us to a fantastic ending that was definitely worth the sleep I lost because I was incapable of putting it down.So. Good. Pick this one up; you won't be sorry.(As an aside, how did I not know that Nicolette Day was Tara Fuller? I loved her two YA books--Inbetween and Blurred when I binge-read them on vacation this summer, and am counting the days until Descent--book three--comes out. In JUNE. At least I have Jace and Hayden's story to tide me over; though it's only a novella, and obviously won't keep me busy that long...)Rating: 4 1/2 stars / A ratingI received a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.