A.R. Perry

Where do I begin to describe how absolutely awful this book is???
First - I didn’t finish the book, but forgot to make a note at which point I stopped reading, and since I usually don’t rate DNFs I won’t rate this book either, but it would 100% have been 1 star…

Second - I’m not a teen, not by a long shot. But I really enjoy YA books if they are good. This is not and I would have been annoyed by it as a teen too.

So. Let me start with my little rant. Our MC Lily is totally unlikeable. Rude and Judgy.

The whole premise of the book is totally unnecessary. Why not just apologize?
And the whole dare situation? So stupid. No way would Lily have done any of it (clothe change at the party, let alone dating through the summer…) if she hates Parker that much. You don’t have to do every stupid thing a game teenagers are playing tells you. It’s called a backbone.
And going to the lake house even after he called the dare off and - I repeat - she hates him..? Never.

The characters and the story were also so shallow. Everything was based on looks. This is a problem in many romance novels, not only YA, but here it was really extreme.

Lily acted pretty confusingly too. She tries too pout, is whiny, then playful and the next second she’s just mean and full of revenge.
We’re supposed to believe that she is insecure (for example: she doesn’t want to wear a bikini because she thinks Parker is comparing her to other girls and she is failing) but then she goes to breakfast only wearing a shirt, catches Parker staring and says full of confidence: “take a picture”. It doesn’t match up for me.

One scene she’s ogling Parker after accusing him of being too full of himself and always thinking he’s just a shallow guy only interested in how a girl looks. Hypocrite much is all I can say. Also: No, you don’t HAVE TO drool over a guy’s muscles…

The writing is fine. I picked it up after I liked the style of one other book by the author, but the characters and story were just too bad. The tension in the beginning was great, but then there were too many shifts from both characters, too much just didn’t make sense and I got too annoyed to continue reading.

I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. For (younger) teens there is just too much sexual talk and foul language, for adults the characters just are way too immature and childish (and some of us even prefer cleaner books as adults). So, just don’t read it…… (mais)

This was a quick and fun read but there were too many things that bugged me to be more than a more or less mindless read in between other books.

What annoyed me the most was the totally unfitting title. It started out fine when Piper, just dumped by her pretty awful boyfriend, decided to prove to him she could be more popular than him by following some simple steps. This idea gets totally lost quite early on in the book and I kept waiting for the next steps that never came.

Also I really didn’t understand why she didn’t tell Carter the truth from the beginning, that she wanted to be popular to get back at her boyfriend instead of making up a crush that never existed. And about the same topic - mild spoiler alert - I didn’t think Carter had a reason to be that hurt by Piper not telling the truth. She should have told him - yes, but for him it didn’t really make such a difference since she told him she wanted to benefit from his popularity. Just in another way than he thought…

So this drama near the end was really unnecessary and it could have been a cute teen romance without the pretend crush and either including the equation for popularity consistently or not using a mathematical approach at all.

Besides all that, I really hated Piper’s best friend and it was totally obvious from the beginning what was going on there and even if I’m a big advocate for forgiveness, Piper shouldn’t have kept being friends. Forgiveness doesn’t mean being naive and gullible.

But of course there were things I liked or I probably would have DNFed. I liked both main characters. Carter more, he was really sweet. Piper was sometimes quite annoying, but she was nice enough and had great chemistry with Carter. It was a really fun read that had me hooked, I have to admit that! I finished it in one sitting. So I would recommend it as a quick and fun teenage book, but not if you get annoyed easily with unnecessary drama or if a book doesn’t follow through with a plot.… (mais)