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banjireads's review against another edition
3.0
I first read this book in middle school, I wanna say it was the summer before 8th grade so around 2007-8. I LOVED this book. Through experiencing this book again as an adult, I can see how this specific book helped shape my tastes for fantasy romance, enemies to lovers (even though these characters aren’t really enemies), and the “I hate you but I love you” type of chemistry. There are parts of the story that have stayed with me for over a decade and getting to read them again was so fun to me. It’s surreal to read this book and see how my tastes for romance matured from this story. I reread Twilight in 2020 and HP earlier this year - both series also shaped my reading tastes to what they are today. But this book feels closer to what I look for in the romance aspects of my fantasy books or even some of the darker romances I’ve read.
This book was hard to find. It wasn’t very popular back when I first read it too. I had spontaneously bought this book with its sequels a few years ago on iBooks and was able to transfer it to my kindle so I can finally read it again. I was never able to find much information about this book back then so I never completed the series but it was always something I wondered about.
Okay but to the review: it’s definitely a middle grade/YA book. I would say that this is YA because of some of the elements involved but much closer to middle grade in my opinion. The language was very juvenile and the character development was slow. It didn’t significantly show in Jazz or Bren until close to the end of the book. Bren and Jazz’s fights were more frustrating to read as an adult than when I was 12/13 years old. And Bren is problematic and some of his reactions/decisions could be seen as red flags. Although, I feel like it was reflective of what relationships are like for 16/17 year olds and so I did like that accuracy to their age. Instead of making these kids with big responsibilities act more mature than they could possibly be. They’re still kids and were forced to take responsibilities above what they should have to handle. I enjoyed this book only because of its nostalgic nature.
This book was hard to find. It wasn’t very popular back when I first read it too. I had spontaneously bought this book with its sequels a few years ago on iBooks and was able to transfer it to my kindle so I can finally read it again. I was never able to find much information about this book back then so I never completed the series but it was always something I wondered about.
Okay but to the review: it’s definitely a middle grade/YA book. I would say that this is YA because of some of the elements involved but much closer to middle grade in my opinion. The language was very juvenile and the character development was slow. It didn’t significantly show in Jazz or Bren until close to the end of the book. Bren and Jazz’s fights were more frustrating to read as an adult than when I was 12/13 years old. And Bren is problematic and some of his reactions/decisions could be seen as red flags. Although, I feel like it was reflective of what relationships are like for 16/17 year olds and so I did like that accuracy to their age. Instead of making these kids with big responsibilities act more mature than they could possibly be. They’re still kids and were forced to take responsibilities above what they should have to handle. I enjoyed this book only because of its nostalgic nature.
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