Review: An Unconventional Love Story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 15, 2014
Ava is a sweet, innocent good girl until she meets tall tattooed bad boy Zac at a party.  When jealous Shara drugs Ava, Zac comes to her rescue, and although attracted to Ava, feels she is not only too innocent for him but would want more than he is willing to give.When Ava calls Zac drunk from another party, in which she plans to be a “bad girl”, Zac again comes to her rescue to ensure she doesn’t do anything stupid with the guy that’s hitting on her.  When Ava tries to leave a party after seeing Zac making out with some other girl, the two finally come clean about their attraction to one another yet Zac still tells her that she should stay away from him. Ava persists and Zac continues to convince her that he is not right for her.  At a birthday party for their friend Tyler, scumbag Antony tries to rape her and both Tyler and her best friend Sophie believe that she wanted to have sex with Antony.  Distraught, Ava begins to walk home, but Zac finds her and takes her to his friend Noah’s house where they learn what happened and decide to take action against Antony for Ava’s sake.  Ava begins to bond with Zac, his friends, and Zac’s sister Laney, and strays further away from what was normal for her, starting with changing her hair color then further on by trying drugs and sex.  After Ava’s friend Sophie goes through an experience similar to Ava’s with Antony, Zac and his friends again decide to step in against Antony and Nathan, even though Sophie is undeserving.  When Ava decides to profess her love for Zac, he decides to end their relationship.  Weeks go by with Ava self-destructing with drugs and alcohol after learning that the mother that abandoned her is actually dead. She spends a large part of her time with Janey, Zac’s sister, and after a traumatizing event causes Zac and Ava together again, Zac finally comes to his senses and realizes that Ava is the only drug that he will ever need.Although at its core, I like the love story between Ava and Zac, two people clearly in pain, I find all the excessive drug and alcohol use by the majority, if not all, of the characters within the story a little off-putting.  I initially found it disconcerting that Ava still pursued Zac, considering all his blatant attempts to thwart her that include him at one point telling her that he had sex with the girl next to him, albeit using a bit stronger words.  Yet despite all the initial misgivings about those issues, Zac and his friends are actually more endearing than the “supposedly good” characters that believe the worst of Ava.  That being said, Zac’s protectiveness of Ava is a little volatile, including threatening bodily harm to anyone that seems to want to get anywhere near her.  A lot of the main characters are flawed, though it is because those flaws that you end up caring about these characters and actually hoping that they realize that what they actually need is one another rather than all the dangerous vices they partake in.  This book is definitely not the most conventional of love stories and might not appeal to all readers, but I found it was truly satisfying to witness all it took to get these two characters together in the end.