Book Title: Love Me Never
(Lovely Vicious, #1)
Author: Sara Wolf
Release Date: Apr. 5, 2016
Genre: YA Contemporary Romance / Dark Comedy
Entangled
About the book:
Previously published as Lovely Vicious, this fully revised and updated edition is full of romance, intrigue, and laugh-out-loud moments.
Seventeen-year-old Isis Blake hasn’t fallen in love in three years, nine weeks, and five days, and after what happened last time, she intends to keep it that way. Since then she’s lost eighty-five pounds, gotten four streaks of purple in her hair, and moved to Buttcrack-of-Nowhere, Ohio, to help her mom escape a bad relationship.
All the girls in her new school want one thing—Jack Hunter, the Ice Prince of East
Summit High. Hot as an Armani ad, smart enough to get into Yale, and colder than
the Arctic, Jack Hunter’s never gone out with anyone. Sure, people have seen him
downtown with beautiful women, but he’s never given high school girls the time of
day. Until Isis punches him in the face.
Jack’s met his match. Suddenly everything is a game.
The goal: Make the other beg for mercy.
The game board: East Summit High.
The reward: Something neither of them expected.
Excerpt:
“Who
are you waiting for?” Knife Kid asks.
“That
obvious, huh?”
“Jack,
then. Screaming at him wasn’t enough?”
“He
was the one who put the pictures of me all over school. Hell no, screaming
isn’t enough.”
Knife
Kid nods. “I saw the pictures. I had fun slashing them with my protractor.
Nobody should be made fun of like that, I think.”
I
don’t know whether to smile at how sweet he sounds or become extremely
concerned at how creepy he sounds. I settle for a little of both just as Jack
comes in. He walks right by and settles in his desk behind me. I turn and watch
him take off his backpack.
“Hi.”
I wave.
It
takes him a moment to recognize me. Or a million. He focuses his gaze on me,
then looks boredly to the window. He puts his chin in his hand, studies a
pigeon in a tree with utmost intensity, and then all at once his eyes go wide.
He swivels his head slowly back to me.
“You,”
he murmurs.
“Me!”
I chirp.
“What
the hell are you doing in that?” he asks, eyes sweeping down to my chest, my
legs, and up again.
“Damage
control.” I smile. “Do you like it?”
“I’ve
seen pigs dressed better.”
“Oh,
I don’t doubt that, considering you see one in the mirror every morning.”
About the Author:
Sara Wolf is a twenty-something author who adores baking,
screaming at her cats, and screaming at herself while she types hilarious
things. When she was a kid, she was too busy eating dirt to write her first
terrible book. Twenty years later, she picked up a keyboard and started mashing
her fists on it and created the monster known as the Lovely Vicious series. She
lives in San Diego with two cats, a crippling-yet-refreshing sense of
self-doubt, and not enough fruit tarts ever.
My thoughts:
3.5
“Addictive YA” STARS
There’s no
better way to summarize this book than to say IT IS addictive. There’s just
something about it that made me keep turning pages. It might’ve been the main
character’s sense of humor, the bantering between the MC and the LI, or even
their chemistry (quite hot for YA); or it might’ve been something completely
different. All I know is when it was done, I was ready for the next one.
Meet Isis
Blake, a seventeen year old allergic to love ever since the boy she had
feelings for convinced her that she was ugly and unworthy of affection. He damaged her so bad that she’s been counting the years, weeks and dates
since she last loved someone.
And now that she’s lost weight, moved to a
different city and is starting at a new school, she’s ready to change her life
and be a different person. That person is apparently not only skinnier, but has
a much bigger personality. While Isis will tell herself she’s ugly and no one
will ever want her (something her ex-crush convinced her of), she’ll tell people
she’s the sexiest and greatest girl around and they don’t deserve all her
coolness if they can’t handle it. To me, this is Isis trying extremely hard to
hide her insecurities and trauma behind the façade of an overly confident girl
who won’t take crap from anyone and who’ll speak her mind no matter what others
think. Isis is obnoxious. Isis will get under your skin. She’s even annoying at
times, but she’s also interesting to read about because she’s complex.
Jack
Hunter, on the other hand, is much quieter than Isis, but just as screwed up.
Known as the Ice Prince of East Summit High, Jack is every teenage girl’s bad
boy dream. He’s hot, he’s cold, he’s untouchable, which makes them all want to
break and take him. One of Jack’s biggest fans is Isis’ first friend at the new
school, and when the girl tries to talk to him at the party, he ends up making
her cry. That’s Jack. An asshole, but one you want to read about. Though they
might or might not be enough to justify his actions, he has his reasons.
So, what does
Isis do when she sees her new friend crying because of Jack? Punch him, of
course. Pretty reasonable, if you ask me. Or maybe not. Definitely not. But
that’s the thing about Isis. She isn’t reasonable. Like I said, she’s kind of
crazy. Plus, she’s funny. Sometimes a bit too funny (was it just me or did some
of her jokes really made her look/sound crazy?).
Anyways…
From that moment on, Jack and Isis start a war that apparently has no
boundaries. Some pretty crazy things happen, some go a little too far to be
believable, but the whole thing is addicting and I couldn’t stop reading it
once I was done rolling my eyes.
Of course the whole “hate your guts, let’s be enemies” thing starts losing strength once Jack and Isis realize the main reason why they’re fighting each other is because they’re the same: smart, witty, strong and damaged. While Isis is still dealing with her insecurities and her broken heart, Jack is dealing with his guilt over some mystery involving a girlfriend/ex-girlfriend who is currently at the hospital battling some sort of rare disease. They’re both trouble, but when you put trouble and trouble together, you might end up with a solution.
That’s at
least the conclusion I hope these characters will get to when this series is
over.
The book
isn’t perfect and there were some aspects that rubbed me the wrong way, and
that’s why I didn’t rate it higher even though I read it in one sitting. I
wasn’t a fan of how the author handled the weight issue, and I often found
myself questioning whether some of Isis’ crazy moments were a result of the
character trying too hard to be different from who she once was, which would
make sense considering everything she was dealing with and how hard she was
trying to hide her true feelings, or if the author was trying too hard to make
her into something bigger and funnier and wittier.
Having
said that, this is one of those stories heavy on drama and angst that actually
work because they make you want to turn the next page, read the next paragraph,
go to bed a little bit later to see what will happen next. And after that damn
cliffhanger, they make you want to grab the next book ASAP.
Tour schedule:
To follow the rest of the tour, click here.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment