Stupid Girl
By: Cindy Miles
Publisher: TKA Distribution
Release Date: May 13, 2014
Genre: New Adult Romance
Rating:

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Only fools fall in love…

After her senior year of high school leaves behind nothing but heartache, Olivia Beaumont is sure of this: She’s no stupid girl. She sets out for Winston College, promising herself that she will remain focused on her first and only love – astronomy. But all it takes is cocky sophomore Brax Jenkins and an accidental collision with a football, to throw her entire year off course.

A quick-tempered Southie who escaped the inner city streets of Boston to pitch for Winston, Brax is known to play way more fields than just the baseball diamond. So, when his name is drawn to take part in his fraternity’s hazing dare, Brax eagerly accepts the mission to take Olivia’s virginity. But he doesn’t plan on falling hard for the sweet and sassy Texas girl who sees right through his bad-boy persona.

As Olivia and Brax battle their feelings for each other, echoes of the past year begin to surface. A boy who once turned Olivia’s whole world upside down reappears, and “harmless” pranks wreak havoc. Pretty soon the aspiring astronomer is on the verge of revealing her most difficult, heartbreaking secret. All the while, Brax must wrestle with the irrevocable dare, and Olivia struggles against all logic as she does the one thing only a stupid girl would do: fall in love.

The only reason this gets 2 stars instead of 1 is because I actually stuck with it until the end, even though there were a lot of times where I was ready to throw in the towel.

There is nothing original to this story. It is your typical new adult romance mold. However, that’s not the bad part. The main character, Brax, is a Bostonian who the author never lets us forget about his accent. Every conversation with Brax was then repeated in italic with a the way he sounded. You know like, “stahvin”, “fahkin”, “chowdah”, “fahtha”… and the list goes on and on and on. Good lord, I wanted to strangle the “southie” right out of him. Especially when the author drilled into us over and over that his “southie” was who he was.

Another negative was the abuse in this book. I mean, I’m all for alpha males but goodness, Brax was insane. Like certifiably psycho. He was always showing up with black eyes, bloody knuckles and once had blood covering his shirt. I thought, he must be a wannabe MMA fighter like every other leading male in new adult. Nope! Homeboy just likes to use his fists to solve every problem. For instance when he was grabbing Olivia’s wrist at a bar, crowding her, and the bartender told him to leave her alone, that she said to back off. What does Brax do? He pummels the crap out of the guy. And what’s worse, later in the book there’s a moment where a video of him going bat shit crazy on someone goes viral, Olivia’s mom sees the video and tells her that she’d give Brax a second chance if she were in her shoes. Uh, hold on, your mom said what?! I’m not talking about the next chapter, or later on in the book, we are talking like the next paragraph after they see the video the mom is saying to give this psycho another chance.

There was just a lot of things that were poorly done. If it wasn’t for my crazy drive to finish a story, I’d have put it down after the first psycho beating because the accent was already doing me in. I stuck with it though. Unfortunately, the storyline just never got any better.

I found this quote hilarious. For one, it’s a little ridiculous for college freshman to be saying. For another, my boss always asks me, when there’s a room of screaming obnoxious children, “Doesn’t that just make your ovaries flutter?” … The joke being that I don’t ever want kids and instead have fur-babies.

“Now lick your glass, Liv. Ash is watching you. God, he makes my ovaries quiver.”

Breakable
(Contours of the Heart, #2)
By: Tammara Webber
Publisher: Berkley
Published: May 6, 2014
Genre: New Adult Romance
Rating:

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He was lost and alone. Then he found her.
And the future seemed more fragile than ever.

As a child, Landon Lucas Maxfield believed his life was perfect and looked forward to a future filled with promise — until tragedy tore his family apart and made him doubt everything he ever believed.

All he wanted was to leave the past behind. When he met Jacqueline Wallace, his desire to be everything she needed came so easy…

As easy as it could be for a man who learned that the soul is breakable and that everything you hoped for could be ripped away in a heartbeat.

Easy told the story of Jacqueline and how she handled a situation that would have led to her being raped. Breakable is Lucas story about his life after his mother was raped and murdered one room over from him when he was a little boy and his road to recovery. Yes, this is essentially the same story as easy, however, at least half of the book is of Lucas’ life growing up that led him to live with the Keller’s in the first place.

I’m not usually a fan of companion novels since they generally seem to be the same story regurgitated back to you, only in a new POV. I’m glad to say that this isn’t all Breakable had to offer. The sections where we go back into Lucas’ past was very fascinating. I like how the author separated the chapters/sections by titling them “Landon” or “Lucas” depending on which time frame we were looking at. Especially since that is how Lucas looks at himself, the boy before he moved away to begin to heal (Landon) and the guy he is now (Lucas).

I don’t think you could read this story without reading Easy. The author doesn’t really go into all the details between the interactions of Jacqueline and Lucas. It was easy to fall back into their story since I’ve read Easy, but I think if I hadn’t, I’d have felt a little disconnected with the relationship between the two. Which, actually worked out for me since I think I’d have been bored if the author rehashed out every little detail that these two had together.

However, even though this was so much more than I thought it was going to be, I really only gravitated to Lucas’ story when he wasn’t interacting with Jacqueline. Maybe it was because it was a fresh new story? Maybe I wanted to get the full story on the Lucas I’d met from Easy? Who knows, but I found myself looking forward to when I’d see the headliner “Landon”. It was great to finally get Lucas’ story of his life leading up to the responsible demeanor he has. Boy, did he come a long way. However, I wish that this was more of a Landon only story leading up to Easy instead of half of it being things I already read before. Either way, I still enjoyed it.

“There’s no right or wrong way to be a survivor, Jacqueline. There’s no script.”

Other reviews from Contours of the Heart
Easy