Review for Tease (The Ivy Chronicles #2) by Sophie Jordan

TITLE: Tease
SERIES: The Ivy Chronicles #2
AUTHOR: Sophie Jordan
PUBLICATION DATE: May 27, 2014
PUBLISHER: William Morrow
PAGES: 320 pages
FORMAT: E-ARC / ARC
SOURCE: Publisher via Edelweiss / Freebie shelf at Malaprops
RATING: 3 bows

Emerson is that girl who never has a problem getting a guy. She uses them and leaves them wanting more. She’s the flirt, the party-girl, with no intention of changing. Then she meets Shaw, a man who seems to see right through her. He won’t settle for the flirty exterior, instead demanding the whole girl and bringing up memories she thought she’d buried.

This review is a bit difficult for me to write. The first novel in this series had a few minor issues, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. This, however, had more issues. The main one being I didn’t care for the lead characters. Emerson especially annoyed me. Shaw was spot-on when he calls her a tease because that is exactly what she is. She’s a character I don’t understand in the least. She’s a virgin who hooks up with guys for the thrill of it and when she gets invited to the Kink Club, I can’t see why she goes. The name and rumors surrounding the club leave no possible confusion on what it’s about and its obvious that people there will expect sex. SO WHY THE FUCK DID YOU GO IF YOU HAVE NO INTENTION OF GOING THAT FAR? I can (sorta) see how you can hook up with guys without going that far but how can you go to a sex club with no intention of having sex? Are you a fucking moron? Apparently so. Then she gets mad at Shaw for jumping in and saving her. She also tries to play that spoiled little rich girl with a daddy who doesn’t really care card and that irritated me as well. From the few encounters we see with her father, she doesn’t try to make him understand or see her, she just goes along with what he wants, so how the hell would he know that she’s unhappy? Parents aren’t mind-readers!

Shaw was a little better, but I still didn’t swoon over him. Alpha males, even ones that claim they aren’t, don’t really work for me. From the moment he meets Emerson, he tries to tell her what to do and how to do it, dragging her away from the Kink Club house immediately. Yes, she really wanted to leave, but he had no way to know that with any kind of certainty! He just wasn’t my kind of guy. He kinda repents at the end and apologizes, but it doesn’t make it acceptable to me.

As much as I wanted to love this as much as I’ve loved Jordan’s previous works, I just couldn’t get into it like I did with Foreplay. I’ve mentioned numerous times that I need character driven stories. I have to care about the character’s to really enjoy a novel and I was a bit ambivalent towards these two at best. And the storyline was predictable. I know, it’s a New Adult romance novel and that demands a certain level of predictability, but this was a bit too predictable. There was no mystery at all, no moments where I was worried that maybe they wouldn’t work it out.

Maybe I’m just wearing out the NA genre to the point I’m getting sick of it, but I just didn’t love this one like I thought I would. I didn’t hate it either, it just was in that awkward middle ground. I am super-excited for the next one because it looks like Logan will finally get his own novel and I love him to bits, even if he is a man-whore from hell. Hopefully this book is just suffering from that dreaded middle book syndrome that I have never seen in a NA before but plagues YA!

****Thank you to William Morrow for providing me with an eARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review****

Review for Foreplay (The Ivy Chronicles #1) by Sophie Jordan

TITLE: Foreplay
SERIES: The Ivy Chronicles #1
AUTHOR: Sophie Jordan
PUBLICATION DATE: November 5, 2013
PUBLISHER: William Morrow
PAGES: 320 pages
FORMAT: Book / ebook
SOURCE: Purchased / Won from A Book And A Latte
RATING: 4 bows

Pepper has always been in love with Hunter, her best friend’s brother. They would be perfect together and now the opportunity has arrived because he just broke up with his long time girlfriend. Her lack of experience has her wondering why he would ever want her so she devises a plan, become talented in the bedroom. For this she will need a teacher and her college roomies have the perfect man picked out, but Reese is more than Pepper expects him to be. Instead of a suave ladies man, she’s a cool and caring, with a troubled past. The deeper into her “lessons” they get, the more she wonders if maybe Hunter isn’t the perfect man for her. Which guy will she choose?

Pepper is that slightly nerdy, slightly sheltered college girl we have all known at some point. She’s very sweet and a bit shy, but also pretty determined to make Hunter see her as a woman, not just his sisters best friend. She was a pretty easy character to relate to and it’s hard not to sympathize with her plight. Who hasn’t experienced that type of crush where you’d do just about anything to make it work? Even fool around with someone you don’t know well to amp-up your boudoir skills. But this is made incredibly difficult by her shyness. How exactly to you come on to a man when you can’t even look him in the eye without blushing?

Reese was entirely too swoon-worthy. He’s hot and mature and caring and sooo much better than Hunter. Once she starts seeing Reese, I don’t understand why she still thought Hunter was perfect. Look at this specimen of man in front of you! LOOK!

You can easily have all of that and you still want Hunter?

It was a concept I couldn’t understand because Reese is perfect and the chemistry between him and Pepper was amazing.

The writing was really good, which I’m coming to expect from Sophie Jordan. The plot was a touch predictable, but you know what you are getting as soon as you start this. The concept behind it is pretty straight forward and we all know she’s going to fall for Reese and end up with him, but there were those terrible moments when we weren’t as sure of that as we’d liked to be.

When it comes down to it, this is an amazing NA that I only had a few minor issues with. The first one being I hate the name Pepper. But beyond that and a handful of tiny things not even worthy mentioning, this was an awesome novel with lovable characters and just the right amount of smut. Smutty enough that you don’t feel like you are reading YA, but not quite overdone where you feel like you are reading erotica. I think anyone who likes NA novels will love this!

Review for Uninvited (Uninvited #1) by Sophie Jordan

TITLE: Uninvited
SERIES: Uninvited #1
AUTHOR: Sophie Jordan
PUBLICATION DATE: January 28, 2014
PUBLISHER: HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
PAGES: 384 pages
FORMAT: E-ARC
SOURCE: Edelweiss
RATING: 4 bows

Davy Hamilton is a musical prodigy. At the age of three she sat down at a piano and started playing perfectly, with no prior practice or training. Her life has always been set, she’ll graduate from high school and attend Julliard, where she has already been accepted and do something musical with her life. Or so she thought. When her test results comeback saying she is a carrier for the HTS gene (the one that causes homicidal tendencies), everything changes. Suddenly everyone in her life is shunning her and she is forced to change schools and be around other maniacs with the kill gene. There had to be so kind of error, but she knows that that can never be fixed now and she must try to make the best out of this terrible situation.

Davy is that perfect girl with all the right friends and the hot popular boyfriend that most people fantasized about in high school. It was more than a little fun to watch the rich popular girl get knocked off her pedestal, though the more you come to care about her, the less fun it becomes. She’s such a strong character, but she losses all her confidence when the gets labeled a carrier and she almost losses herself in the struggle to keep her shit together. I imagine everyone would go through a similar transformation if life as they knew it was ripped from their grasp.

Sean O’Rourke is that bad guy you momma always warned you about, or is he? He’s the classic bad guy with a heart of gold, who has had the carrier label since a young age. He even has the carrier brand around his neck because society deemed one of his actions so dangerous that the world need to always be aware that he was a carrier. As much as I wanted to be irritated at him for being a bit cliche with the bad boy imagine, he’s ability to always save Davy’s ass melted my heart. Against his better judgement, he always comes to her rescue, while spouting those annoying “it’s better if you stay away” sentiments. He gets over that eventually, but I wanted to punch him every time he even implied it.

This novel has all the things I look for when I’m reading, like good characters, interesting story, great writing, all that jazz, but what really gets me here is the philosophical question it presents about the characters. Are these people really violent deviants who are genetically coded to murder and pillage or do the majority act out based on the fact that society pushes them into that role? Yes, it’s obvious that there are a number of carriers who truly deserve the label and are violent beyond reasonable understanding, but aren’t we more than our genetic code? Don’t we have the choice, in most cases, to act as violently as our hormones command us to or to stop and think about our actions? If society is going to treat us like shit regardless of if we fight our urges or not, why bother? These poor people are shunned and abused by society as a whole and even each other. You’d think they’d band together to create a support group, but there are too many who’d rather just accept the role society has placed them in and act out than fight the injustice. And things that are normally acceptable, like slapping your ex-boyfriend for being a jackass, are now a sign that you really are a carrier for the kill gene.

This is my first Sophie Jordan novel. I know, this chick manages to write books in all three of my favorite genres (young adult, new adult, and historical romance), so I don’t know why it has taken me so long to get around to reading her novels, but if they are all this good, sign me up! This novel had very few issues for me, no love triangle, no instalove, and no cliffhanger. The ending doesn’t wrap everything up in a nice little bow, but things end on a hopeful note which is all I ask for. My only minor issues are the cover and the length. Despite the fact that this is almost 400 pages, it felt short. When I flipped to the last page on Luna, I couldn’t believe it was over. There was still so much more territory that needed to be covered! It’s not that it felt underdeveloped, but I was just craving more. The cover also doesn’t really match the story at all. I don’t see at all how the levitating girl gives any indication of what this story is about. Maybe I’m wrong, but it just doesn’t fit to me.

This is one of the more unique YA novels I’ve read it a while. Jordan manages to wholly captivate her with her story and leave them desperate for me. I will definitely be on the lookout for the next novel in this series, as well as anything else attached to this talented woman’s name. If her new adult novels or her historical romance novels are half as good, I’m in for a real treat!

****Thank you to HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, for providing me with an eARC via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review****