leahrosereads's Reviews (1.04k)

Currently doing a re-read on this (last read was in HS). Unfortunately, it's not holding up the test of time. Nostalgia wise, it's still what got me through a lot of BS when I was younger, so I still liked it. Adult me just doesn't like it much anymore.

This was a fantastically written story! I can't speak for rep, but its own voices, so I'm guessing it's pretty great (especially based on other reviews I read). It was heart wrenching to read Morgan's fears of losing her best friend while discovering and owning her identity. Reading Eric's POV on his own struggles really allowed for an incredibly cohesive and beautiful story. Loved this!

It's the first Jalil book (my favorite character), and I still really liked this one.

This book attempted a pretty hard subject matter, and honestly I wish it had handled it more effectively. Unfortunately, the POVs didn't feel different from each other, so I had to keep checking whose head I was in and in general, the characters felt pretty one dimensional. I'm sure there are other books that deal with school shootings in a much more realistic and profound way.

Is it me? Should I not have read back to back hate to love books? I just really didn't love this one at all (mostly because of Lucy's personality for like the first 2/3 of the book). Josh was great, the ending was good, I just wish it hadn't taken so long to be enjoyable for me.

I'm still pretty new to this whole romantic contemporary genre, but this was definitely middle of the road for me. The best part was the writing, but I didn't really care for the two MCs, and I'm not a fan of lying tropes clearly. This one felt a little worse, because the love interests were best friends, and I just can't see the reasoning to lie like this to someone that matters that much to you.

That being said, Christina Lauren write so incredibly well, and I flew through this wanting to know what happened from start to finish.

Another lying element that I didn't completely love, but I understood it more here, since the two MCs were strangers. It worked better here, than in My Favorite Half-Night Stand. The chemistry between these two characters was fantastic, and I loved all the side characters as well.

This was just another cute, quick, fun read from Christina Lauren.

Continuing this roll of romantic contemporaries, I was recommended this by a couple of people. The writing was great - Tessa Bailey can absolutely weave a compelling story together. Unfortunately, I didn't really like the characters. They didn't feel fully fleshed out or interesting, and I genuinely wished I saw more of Georgie as her own person, but she came off very love struck the entire time. And, I did NOT like Travis at all.

What little I saw of Rosie, I really liked though, so I'll be trying the next book in the series.

So, this type of book is not for me. Too smutty, too one dimensional, too boring. I'll be avoiding books like this in the future.

Authors grow into their voices and evolve all the time, and that's very clear with Christina Lauren. Their newer books are objectively much better than this (writing, plot, character development, etc.). I'll definitely continue trying their new books, but I won't be continuing with this series.

I almost DNFd this book, but I pushed through it because I really wanted to give it a chance. Unfortunately, the best part of this book for me was the Clive...the cat. The writing was OK here, but I'm not sure I'll try another book in this series.