*Grabby Hands* Release & Review - Resisting the Rebel by Lisa Brown Roberts

Image and blurb from Goodreads

Title: Resisting the Rebel
Author: Lisa Brown Roberts

Publication Date: July 25th, 2016
Category/Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Entangled Crush

Disclaimer: This book contains a villain pretending to be a hero, a hero pretending to be a villain, a disco-dancing heroine, two overprotective sidekicks, a little bit of bad language, and a whole lot of swoony kissing.

Spirit committee leader Mandy Pennington is secretly in love with her best friend, Gus, but when he hooks up with her archenemy at a party, she decides to win him over once and for all. She just doesn’t know how. But who better to help than hot loner Caleb Torrs? 

Caleb’s got his own problems, but when he sees Mandy pining over Gus at a party, he thinks she’s finally smoked the spirit stick and lost her mind. Maybe he has, too, because he just asked Mandy to be his fake girlfriend.She’ll get her loser friend’s attention, and he’ll get his stalker ex off his back.It’s a win-win.

But soon one fake date blends into the next and before he knows it, he actually wants to kiss Mandy. For real. Too bad their plan is working, and Gus is finally noticing the one girl Caleb just might be falling for… 

Goodreads

Buy Link: Amazon 

4.5 “Disco & Power Rangers” STARS

ARC via NetGalley

Thank you, Entangled Crush!

You guys, this book! This. Freaking. Hot. YA. Contemporary. Book.

Everyone knows I'm a huge fan of the fake boyfriend/girlfriend trope. HUGE FAN. So this book caught my attention pretty quickly. Throw in a rebel, brooding love interest, and you have me begging and going all: *grabby hands* *grabby hands* 

This time, the fake relationship felt even better because this two totally had the hots for each other way before they even considered pretending to be a couple. And when I say the hots, I mean THE hots. I know that doesn't even make sense, but who cares?

Here we have super quirky, disco-loving, spirit-leader Mandy. A girl who calms herself by thinking of mantras such as "The universe only gives me what I can handle". Dude, she's awesomely hilarious. And also one of those characters you spend half the time wanting to shake to see if she gets back down to Earth, and the other half trying to keep her exactly where she is because the world is an ugly place for such a gentle soul.

But Mandy's life isn't all rainbows and blutterflies and calming mantras. She lost her mother when she was younger. Her dad isn't around all that much because he's working his behind off to feed their family. Her brother is too busy smoking weed to care about anything else. And her grandmother is sick (but she's still a hilarious old lady). Mandy also has ADHD and dysgraphia, which means school isn't that easy for her. To make matters worse, her long-time crush, Gus, is hooking up with her long-time nemesis.

The only thing working for Mandy is her friendship with J.T. and Cammie.

Then Caleb happens. He's the school dark, brooding and kind-of-scary bad boy. He wears leather and has perfect hair. And a perfect face. And body. Meaning he's hot AF. Caleb is also super sarcastic, has just broken up with a very crazy, potentially stalker ex-gf and wants nothing to do with overly happy people like Mandy. Until this one night that he gives her a ride home and can't stop thinking about her after that. Or all the very HOT scenes he wants to do with her.

Mandy and Caleb are opposites -- there's no doubt of that. But you know what they say about opposites, right? Now that Mandy needs to get Gus's attention so he can ask her to homecoming instead of her nemesis, and that Caleb needs to find a way to get his stalker ex-gf off his back, they team up and pretend to be a couple.

Of course pretending is much harder when these two have over-the-freaking-top chemistry. Guys, when I say chemistry, I mean the kind that has you turning pages desperately because you don't want to miss a single encounter and you can't wait for the next time they'll be in the same room together. That kind of chemistry.

So, yeah. watching Caleb and Mandy go from "I can't stand you" to "let me kiss you" to "tell me you don't feel all of this when I kiss you" to "let's kiss more often" is prety awesome.

You know what else is awesome? J.T. and Caleb's bromance. Dude. Dude!!! They called each other Red Ranger and Blue Ranger. Those are boys after my heart. I LOVE Power Rangers (there's a movie adaptation coming and I can't wait for it). So yeah, I shipped J.T. and Caleb probably as hard as Caleb and Mandy.

There were a few times I was annoyed at Mandy, especially with the whole thing with Gus and his eight hands (you'll get it when you read it), but she was such a free spirit that staying mad at her required too much effort. That effort was better spent swooning over Caleb, because he's exactly my type of LI - dark, twisted, good and bad and hot.

As you can see, I enjoyed this sooooo very much. It took me a while to start it because life kept getting in the way, but once I did I told life to gimme a break and didn't stop until I was done. Put life on hold for a couple of hours and read this book. It's totally worth it.

*If you liked this review (or not), if you read the book (or not), come say hello and leave your comments bellow.