Sunday, March 23, 2014

#Review: Wrecked ( An ArrowHart College Novel)


Book Title: Wrecked ( An ArrowHart College Novel)
Author: Priscilla West |WebsiteTwitterFacebook|
Publisher: Blackbird Publishing
Genre:New Adult Romance
Series/Standalone: Series
Format: ebook, 
Cost: $9.99, $2.99 Nook, 
Pages: 286
How I got it: eARC via NetGalley 
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble |
Publication Date: 12/6/2013
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Synopsis:
There would be no happy ending for us. He was too damaged. I was too broken.” Two years ago, Lorrie’s mother was murdered. But that wasn’t the end of it. Reeling from the tragedy, Lorrie’s father spiraled into alcohol, depression, and finally suicide. The two most important people in Lorrie’s life are both gone but she’s still alive. Trying to recover from the tragedy, Lorrie returns to campus, ready to pick up the pieces of her life. All Lorrie wants is to get back to “normal.” Then she meets Hunter. The man, the legend, “The Hammer.” Hunter is a cage fighter who takes on every fight like he’s got nothing to lose. His life is a tangled mess of girls, booze, and fist fights. And while it may seem like he’s got a devil-may-care attitude, he’s fighting a private cage-match with a monster he can’t defeat. Lorrie knows that Hunter is exactly the type of guy she should stay away from, especially in her fragile state, but Hunter has other ideas. As Hunter and Lorrie grow closer together, will they be able to overcome their pain and heal each other? Or will they both end up wrecked?
This was an impulsive click on NetGalley for me, I have the author's other books on my queue of books to read, as this has a pretty solid four stars on goodreads and a few of my fave and trusted reviewers like it; so of course I wanted to read it. As I said before I see the ratings, but I don't read the reviews until I'm either half way through and have an opinion or I'm struggling with the book and want to see if others had the sane problem.  This one I'm glad I didn't read the reviews. I liked going in with no preconceived notions.

The story starts of fast then slows down and then crawls for a while before it picks up right before it finishes, since I was already so invested I went ahead and bought the next book *yes once again I broke the ban but whatevs I'm reading aren't I??*.  I enjoyed the story enough to want to know the ending, I personally thought she could have made this one large book especially because for literally the first half of the book it was just boring ground laying stuff.

Question for y'all since when did fight club move to college?? This is like the third or fourth new adult novel I've read where the character is a boxer/fighter/ MMA fighter. Is this a way of showing how bad boy the male protagonist is supposed to be?? I just don't understand the trend but hey at least in this one he's legit instead of underground fights.  As a character he was clearly a woman's interpretation of a man, there were many times he said something that I wanted to laugh like, how many young guys do you know who really talk like this?? Yeah not too many or maybe even none at all.  We didn't really have a read on him until the very end of the book (at 90%) is when he began sharing his side of the story and we begin to learn why he is the way he is.  And that's kinda when he went from a flat character there for the female to lean on to being a bit more of a full character himself.

For about 50 percent of the book we have Lorrie denying that she had any feelings for him at all and really the way she was written, it clearly didn't appear to be any feelings.  I kinda don't like Lorrie, who tells him she doesn't want to be anything but friends but then gets hella jealous when he dates other girls.  She holds rumors about his life above his head but yet demands he not listen to the rumors about her.  I get why she's confused and out of focus I mean really her life went to hell in a hand~basket and she was left with the fallout of other people's mistakes and selfishness, but ummm why are you punishing him?? He didn't do anything to you.  While I get her hesitancy towards dating when she isn't ready, why be his friend if you know you have feelings??

I kinda got frustrated reading this book, because we spent so much time in Lorrie's head, and getting the story from her POV, she was way self centered, wanting him to be there for her but not really giving him a chance, like how was he supposed to know something was wrong when you haven't told him your last name.  I just wanted to shake her and tell her to take her head out of her hindparts, especially because you claim to love him but don't really talk to him about important things.

I really felt like there was more going on than she knew about.  I, of course, as we are supposed to disliked Ava, but I totally got why Ava went in on her because really Lorrie you are too self centered to be a good girlfriend. I don't think they had a shot because Lorrie was hell bent on not being in a relationship and when we learn Hunter's secret we see why he was holding back too & quite frankly his was way more important to them moving on as a couple than hers was. With both of them hiding important parts of themselves back they never really had a chance.  Add in friends who are concerned but won't share what they really know and you just have a clusterf*ck of foolishness masquerading as a relationship.

Once we hit the second half of the book the story really took off and got way better, the character development really began to come together and we learnt more about each of them and their lives together. I personally loved how well they worked together once they moved from friends to lovers.  I really really liked reading their love making scenes, because they were sweet and sexy.  There were a few moments I had to re-read to make sure I wasn't making it up, there were a few awkward to read scenes in there, they didn't really flow as well as the rest of the story.

Other than a thin plot point to get them coming together often what was the point of the kittens??  I would have liked for their friends to be described more, a little more background on each of them, giving us clearer picture of them would have been nice as well.  I doubt I could truly describe how anyone but Hunter looks because she barely describes herself.  Her aunt and uncle are also only thin flat characters, we know they took her in, but what do they really do, how do they look, how are you related, was your aunt you dad's sister, or your mom's sister. There were so many ways to make the story richer and fuller that were left on the wayside in a attempt to get to the romance of the two of them.

Even though I was frustrated with both characters, I did enjoy reading the story. Enough to get the second book and I'm going to read that soon as well.  Overall the story felt a little disjointed and I was left feeling confused and frustrated, but then again so was Lorrie so maybe that's what we're supposed to feel?? IDK but I'm going to go read Rescued now and let you know what I think of that later.
 ★★★☆
Happy Reading

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