“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.” ― George Orwell, 1984
Rating: 7/10"If he'd learned anything good in this place, it was that he had to remember, no matter what, to simply breathe." "That hurts where Band-Aids can't touch." "Jenna still called it: The Incident That Cannot be Named. As in, Vere's personal Voldemort." "The feeling of being in love was better than everything else." "I'll let Vere Roth drive me straight to hell if she keeps smiling at me like this." "Friends don't let friends have food face." "He breathed her in like she was water and he'd been in some sort of long, terrible drought." "Even his knees were gorgeous." "It was like parting the Red Sea as people moved away from him. Cringed away from him, actually. Avoiding all eye contact and everything!" "Everyone has scars, they just aren't as visible as yours." | I have mixed feelings about this story. There were some definite good parts, but mostly it was meh for me. The story seemed to take forever to get going and then once it did, all the various parts and pieces went on longer than I thought they should have. It just seemed to drag and I found myself wondering when the chapters and parts and the whole thing in general was going to be over. The, funnily enough, it just sort of ended when I was expecting there to be more. The voices of the characters also seemed a bit off to me. A lot of the things Hunter said out loud to Vere were things most people would say in their heads. The pair of them just acted completely opposite, at times, of what I was expecting or how normal people act in those situations. The whole scenario was totally far-fetched. A rockstar going to live away from his family and at first calling the reason because of a prank then coming out and saying he was depressed. Eliot tried to tackle serious topics like suicide and depression, but didn't really do a great job with it. It seemed like those parts of the story weren't really important and just thrown in so she could have a story with a serious side to balance out the ridiculousness of the situation. I also really didn't like Curtis. With him and Vere being friends since they were kids and coming over all the time even after "the incident", how on earth could Vere not have known what a jerk he was. And how could Charlie be so protective of Vere with Hunter but not with Curtis. It makes no sense. Even the first kiss part was weird. It was super cute if you isolate it by itself but Vere asking her BGF to do that and not even because she was secretly crushing on Hunter didn't fit. And Eliot seemed to make it clear Vere had no idea she liked Hunter or that Hunter was falling for Vere. Either Vere is extremely dim-witted, which I don't think it true, or Eliot needed to do a better job making her characters and their feelings more realistic. There were also more than a few typos and grammar mistakes that should have been there as I was reading the completed edition and not an ARC or other draft. "Yes, his crush was painful, but it was also the best feeling he'd ever felt. And he couldn't imagine how empty he'd be if it ever stopped." "But as he played and played, letting the somber tones of the guitar fill the room, he sang everything he wasn't brave enough to utter in words." "Before he could even address how badly Vere had broken his heart, he had to deal with the reality of himself." |