Sitting on the edge with my Kindle

2.5 stars

Oh wow this hits all of my previously identified New Adult/Young Adult checklist:

1. Written in the first person POV – check, although not done badly

2. Obsession with describing clothes, hair and make-up of all protagonists – check, although not annoyingly so

3. Angst - parental abuse, ex-boyfriend abuse, mad stalker, rape victims, death of first boyfriend, substance abuse, death of mother from cancer, in the witness protection programme (I made that one up but I bet there's one out there) – check

4. Arts - one of them is a dancer or a musician or a singer and/or a tattoo artist - check

5. Tattoos and/or piercings generally – don't think so

6. Both protagonists being, quite frankly, as thick as pig shit. These books take mutual misunderstandings to a whole new level of "he said, she said" when in most instances by page 50 anyone with half a brain would have said "hey, what are you talking about, I didn't stand you up/leave you/sleep with your best friend" and that would be that! - there's a bit of this but not much

7. Usually explicit sex scenes and/or obsession with the heroine's so-called V-Card - check

8. Having stupid names – no one in these books has a name like John Brown – checkRainy Dey ! Rainy Dey FFS

9. The guy giving the girl a stupid nickname - check Sunshine (get that, she's called Rainy Dey and he calls her Sunshine?)

10. Someone has oodles of money – enough for a teenager to buy a house/car/engagement ring – check

11. Some sort of stupid bet – check

So, I hated Rainy Dey, all she ever seemed to do was watch Aaron do nothing, then she would run away crying, over and over again. Aaron needed to grow a pair – he started the book as the boy who had everything and ended it as a weak, needy, cry-baby, slightly creepy, obsessive who got pushed around by everyone.

And really, in this day and age would a group of wealthy privileged boys have a stupid competition to see how many girls they could sleep with? And would they be able to keep it quiet?

Evan was a complete tool in the book until the very last minute when I could almost hear the cogs turning in the author's mind, "Hey, I could do a sequel, and I could make it about Evan" (I don't know if she has, but I suspect it).

The book ended so abruptly I was actually expecting it to end on a cliff-hanger but no, all was forgiven in the space of what felt like two pages.

Going back to special forces romances – formulaic in a different way!