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****
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