Review: Until You by Penelope Douglas

Until You
(Fall Away, #1.5)
By: Penelope Douglas
Publisher: Penguin Intermix
Published: Feb. 18, 2014
Genre: New Adult Romance
Rating:

Have you ever been so angry that hitting things felt good? Or so numb that you actually felt high? The past few years have been like that for me. Traveling between fury and indifference with no stops in between.

Some people hate me for it, while others are scared of me. But none of them can hurt me, because I don’t care about anything or anyone.

Except Tatum.

I love her so much that I hate her. We used to be friends, but I found out that I couldn’t trust her or anyone else.

So I hurt her. I pushed her away.

But I still need her. The sight of her centers me, and I can pool all of my anger into her. Engaging her, challenging her, bullying her…they are my food, my air, and the last part of me that feels anything human.

But she left. She went to France for a year, and came back a different girl.

Now, when I push, she pushes back.

In Bully you never fully understand Jared and the reasoning behind why he was such a bully to Tate. I was hoping Until You would be a chance for him to shine and for us to get a more in-depth look at Jared. Unfortunately, he still wound up coming off as a douche. In fact, he wound up coming off as a down right horrible person. You saw bits and pieces of his less than stellar side but in this you get all the behind the scenes of what was going on with Jared during the time-frame of Bully and it wasn’t pleasant. I mean, he is just outright mean. He physically attacks his so-called best friend because he hit on Tate. He pulls a knife on another student. He mentally degrades everyone around him. It was just really hard to find a redeeming quality in him with this book. With that being said though, I did sort of enjoy the story.

I liked that the author didn’t take the easy route with this companion novel and just give the readers the same story but with Jared’s POV. Penelope wound up writing almost a whole new story. We read about Jared’s time staying with Tate’s dad while she’s away in France. We follow him to the jail house where he meets his father. We also get a more in-depth look at the summer he spent with his father. Sure, we are given the key points of his interaction with Tate–so no worries for those that want more Tate and Jared time– but the author added so much more to make the story different. There are also a lot of added bonus scenes that weren’t in the original story which I heavily enjoyed. Those new scenes that weren’t part of the original story really helped breathe new life into Jared’s novel.

My one complaint about the story is that Jared was written by a female and you can tell. He would say or think things and then backtrack to negate what he just said. He called a girl he was hooking up with his “latest toy” and then the next sentence consisted of how he doesn’t actually view women as toys because that would be degrading. There were a lot of those instances where the author was trying to follow the character she set up but didn’t want readers to loathe him. So, she would have him say/do things but then have him backtrack and show how he didn’t really mean it. If she had committed to having me dislike him, fine. However, the tug of war on his personality was a little annoying.

Aside from the author trying to make people not hate her character (which most already hated) I did find the story entertaining. We are given new material and presented Jared’s side of the story. Did he redeem himself in my eyes? Nope. Homeboy is completely screwed up and needs to go to a lot of counseling and therapy. He’s mentally unstable and toxic to those around him. I hope people don’t walk away after reading this story with some crazy notion of how romantic and awesome Jared is. Given the title of both books, I’d say the author did a great job.

There were two kinds of stupid. Stupid people that got drunk and humped trees, and stupid people that just humped trees.

 

Previous reviews from Fall Away
Bully