Review: Torn by K.A. Robinson

Torn
(Torn, #1)
By: K.A. Robinson
Publisher: Atria Publishing
Published: May 7, 2013
Genre: New Adult
Rating:

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Chloe hasn’t had the best life. With a mother who is gone more often than not, she has had to raise herself. After graduating high school, she leaves to start a new life away at West Virginia University with her best friends Amber and Logan, determined to leave her demons in the past.

On her first day, she meets a stranger who takes her breath away at first sight. Until she met Drake, no one had ever sparked her interest. Now this tattooed and pierced bad boy is all she can think about, no matter how hard she fights it.

Falling for Drake was never part of her plans, but when it happens, things seem to do anything but fall into place.

Dealing with a tragic past, Drake has never cared about anyone else but himself and his band. But when Chloe takes the empty seat next to him in class, things start to change. Instantly drawn to her, he begins to wonder if one girl can take a cold hearted womanizer and change every part of him?

Long hidden feelings are revealed and friendships tested to the brink.

Chloe’s mother resented her for being born. At a very young age, Chloe learned to fend for herself. So, now that she’s finally free to start over in college, she finds herself in the center of a major drama bomb. Her best friend is in love with her, the sexy lead singer from the local rock band is giving her mixed signals and her mom decides to try to pop back into her life.

This story read a lot like Beautiful Disaster for me. Which wasn’t a bad thing since I really enjoyed that story. But if that story wasn’t for you, then you may want to skip this one. The writing style is similar in the fact that it’s very simplistic and straight forward. There’s no fancy writing to woo the reader into another world. Another similarity are the main characters. Chloe is a girl who’s trying to start their college experience in a fresh new light when she meets the mysterious bad boy who is a total man whore. Now granted Drake is the lead singer of the popular local rock band, everyone knows who he is, and every chick wants to do him. Heck, there is even a reference to “Mr. Maddox” when one of the character’s are reading a book. So yeah, there were a lot of similarities.

The one thing that irritated me about this story was Chloe. She ping pongs between her best friend Logan and Drake. Back and forth it went, throughout the whole story. A little angst is always welcomed in a story but I am not a fan of love triangles. At the beginning when we meet Logan, I instantly knew that he was in love with her.

“He pulled me into a tight hug. ‘Don’t ever worry about that Chloe, you will always have me. We will be old and gray and still together.’

I hugged him back. ‘I’m glad. Hopefully my future husband and your future wife won’t mind us being permanently attached to each other.’

His face grew tight at my words and I looked at him in confusion. ‘What’d I say?’

His face quickly relaxed and he smiled at me. ‘Nothing, I was just thinking that you will never find a guy good enough to be your husband.'”

Then when she picks between the two of them, she constantly finds herself going back to the other one. God, I really wanted to smack the girl. I’m not one for cheating or that uncomfortable on the edge of cheating. Eeeesh

Aside from the whole uncomfortable parts, I did enjoy this story, a lot. I fell in love with the characters (minus Chloe) and was really invested in their story. I loved that the author has very simplistic writing style. Plus, I loved the rock references, since I myself, am a fan of that genre of music. So when Chloe requests that Drake and his band play a cover of Theory of a Deadman’s “Gentleman”, I was mentally cheering on the authors choice of music.

“When you give a girl respect
Treat her like she is the best
You’re nothing to her
She’d rather have you playing games
Piss her off and make her wait
If you want to do her

Girls don’t want a gentleman
They say they do but in the end
Girls don’t want a gentleman
They want a loser like me
Girls don’t want a gentleman
If you want to get to them
Girls don’t want a gentleman
They want a loser like me”

I don’t know if the author could have chosen a better song to have Drake sing. I mean, she really hit the nail on the head and I feel like this should be the theme song to a ton of NA books that are out. These girls are always attracted to the bad boys but resist their advances until the guy decides to stud around and then the girl’s are like “Why are you always sleeping with all these girls!? Don’t you care about me?” Ahh… it drives me nuts.

Will I be picking up the seconds book to this story? Hell yeah!

“Not that I was the type to fall for the body-modification, bad-boy type-despite my own appearance-but this guy could have worn his hair dyed pink and in pigtails and pulled it off looking hot.”