A Bookish Girl
Cute, easy read, but I don't get the big deal everyone is making out of this book. It's pretty much the same as dozens of other sexy chicklit/romance I've read. The only thing of note is that the main character is autistic, which is at least interesting as it's something different, and also it's great to find diversity popping up in a genre that's usually quite samey when it comes to its female leads. However, I don't think that's enough to make this book more than likeable but unmemorable.
I have so many things to say. Most of which are versions of “I really want to fix this book!”
It started out well. The famous Austen characters are updated for the modern day, but they still retain their recognisable characteristics. Charlotte, now a lead character, was given a bit more to do, which I liked. And I admit I loved the name “Long Borne Suffering”! That made me chuckle.
So at first it's all going along swimmingly; Darcy is aloof and judgmental, Elizabeth is immediately on the defensive, and Charles and Jane are sweetly attracted to each other from the moment they meet. So far so good. But then it all just becomes a huge mess of terrible writing, exacerbated by the most awkward sex scenes I've ever read in my life. “He suckled her delicious tit”.... REALLY? I have no problem with sex scenes, but these really were the worst. And so unnecessary. We don't need to see Jane and Bingley having raunchy sex, ffs. Maybe one or two for when Elizabeth and Darcy finally get together, because sexual tension, but that's all that's necessary. I wish the author had had an editor to cut all the awkward sex - and even the “romantic” stuff is pretty cringe-worthy. “She purred happily in his arms”... VOMIT.
I want to slap this author because she had such a fun idea but no idea how to, well, WRITE it. A book like this was always going to be bordering on cheesy, but in the right hands it could have been cute and fun. I love fluff. But this was just... so bad. If someone (hello, elusive editor) had just ruthlessly cut all the sex scenes and some of the repetitive crap, fixed the most cringey bits, and cut the book down to about 75% of its current length, we might have had a cute, fluffy read. And that's all I wanted!
Two stars (three for premise, one for the terrible writing).
Ugh, I don't even know why I finished this. Probably because I really have to hate a book to DNF it, and it was an easy read. But this book is just so LAME and badly written. Honestly, I'm shocked that it was published as a real book, because it reads like really bad fanfiction. I've read tons of self-published stuff that was better than this, and that just makes me sad for those authors.
I love stories about “normal” people having relationships with celebrities, but this was the worst of its kind I've read. Don't bother!
This was a lot better than most student-teacher romance/smut stories, which usually read like bad to average fanfic. This one actually had a great set-up, and character development, and a cast of interesting supporting characters. I loved finding out the back story of Aspen's twin sister and Morgan's brother. And nothing was rushed about their relationship: there isn't even any actual sex until more than halfway through the book. Really well-paced.
THE GOOD:
I honestly thought this story would be dull and I'd DNF it, because what could possibly be interesting now that Luci is no longer Josh's student? But the force of the story kept me going, and I read the whole thing in one sitting to see what happened.
THE BAD:
It gets really repetitive with the sex scenes. There are just too many of them, compared to actual plot.
I'm really disappointed that the author didn't bother to get a proofreader for this book, either. There are SO MANY mistakes, and that always jolts me out of the story. There were some especially terrible ones in this book, where Paige Laurens makes it clear that she doesn't even know what certain words mean. Like “ensconced”, and “eludes”. That shit really irritates me.
I don't really know how to rate this book. On the one hand, the writing is average at best, and because it's self-published (I assume?) it's got quite a lot of spelling and grammatical errors. It basically reads like the kind of fanfic I've read hundreds of times on fanfic.net or wattpad.
And yet it was exactly what I wanted. I was LOOKING for student-teacher smut, and it totally delivered. Sure, some of the things that happened were totally ridiculous (they didn't ever seem to be worried about getting caught, despite having sex at school constantly, like every day), but this sort of book isn't there to be realistic. Although I could have done without Luci constantly rolling her eyes. Do people even roll their eyes at each other, REALLY? If they do, they definitely don't do it in every single scene.
So if I'm rating this on its page-turning goodness, it'd be 4 stars. I flew through this.
If I'm rating it on how good a book it actually is, then it's 2 stars.
So I've compromised on 3, but it's a weak 3. I certainly wouldn't read it again, because there's nothing to it except seeing what happens next.
Meh. The premise was so much better than the book. It sounded so interesting, but it was actually just really dull. And SO much religious discussion, which is not my thing.
I'd have given it one star for “I didn't like it”, but I reserve that for books I really hated, which Goodreads doesn't have an option for. It was somewhere between “Ok” and “I didn't like it”. So 1.5 stars.
