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3.09 AVERAGE
3.09 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This was nice, I liked it. I did feel like there was something missing though, like the writing could've been refined just a little more to make it read better. I don't know.
Like the characters are okayish—the only character I liked more than the others was Juliet—but they didnt really make me want to go in hard for them, they were just there. Like I kinda get the set up of the story and it's a really cool idea, but it just didn't hit the mark for me, it didn't take me to that higher place.
It kinda reads like Ready Player One in that's there's a lot of pop culture refrencing (like I'm actually surprised Game of Thrones wasn't mentioned). Ten, maybe twenty years from now, if any kid reads this they might feel out of touch because most of this refrencing is for teens of these past years, so in ten years kids may not get the refrencing from the book and not be able to connect well enough.
And then the whole explaining everyone's outfits thing. Like explaining outfits works for certain situations, but is kinda of overkill when a character has to describe every outfit they wear, like every time they change they have to tell us what colour the button down shirt with short sleeves they're wearing is and what outfit all their friends are wearing or what everyone's hair is doing. It's a bit much. And I saw the and/and/and thing a little too much too.
I'm not disappointed by this book or anything, but I feel kind of meh about it. Even the ending was kind of meh, like it didn't leave me going holy shit or even going aww, it just was like “Oh, that's the end? Cool.” It didn't leave me with a feeling of wanting more, like a being excited for the next book kind of thing (I'm pretty sure this is stand-alone, but the point I'm making is that it didn't end in a way that, if there were another book, I'd be excited for it).
So yeah, it's a cool idea, it's a nice read, but it's kinda bland overall.
Like the characters are okayish—the only character I liked more than the others was Juliet—but they didnt really make me want to go in hard for them, they were just there. Like I kinda get the set up of the story and it's a really cool idea, but it just didn't hit the mark for me, it didn't take me to that higher place.
It kinda reads like Ready Player One in that's there's a lot of pop culture refrencing (like I'm actually surprised Game of Thrones wasn't mentioned). Ten, maybe twenty years from now, if any kid reads this they might feel out of touch because most of this refrencing is for teens of these past years, so in ten years kids may not get the refrencing from the book and not be able to connect well enough.
And then the whole explaining everyone's outfits thing. Like explaining outfits works for certain situations, but is kinda of overkill when a character has to describe every outfit they wear, like every time they change they have to tell us what colour the button down shirt with short sleeves they're wearing is and what outfit all their friends are wearing or what everyone's hair is doing. It's a bit much. And I saw the and/and/and thing a little too much too.
I'm not disappointed by this book or anything, but I feel kind of meh about it. Even the ending was kind of meh, like it didn't leave me going holy shit or even going aww, it just was like “Oh, that's the end? Cool.” It didn't leave me with a feeling of wanting more, like a being excited for the next book kind of thing (I'm pretty sure this is stand-alone, but the point I'm making is that it didn't end in a way that, if there were another book, I'd be excited for it).
So yeah, it's a cool idea, it's a nice read, but it's kinda bland overall.
I was honestly really excited to read this book but there was so many things I felt were missing and after reading some other reviews I can see it wasn’t just me. There was a lot of plot holes and places that left me wondering what was happening and how this could logically happen. I enjoyed that it poked fun at stereotypical YA tropes and how it developed the character of Caden. There was just some problems. I think the part of Dyl using Caden's sexuality against him to win the interest of Juliet was what ruined this book for me. It just didn’t settle well with me,
Everyone was just so excepting of the shitty things everyone was doing (Trevor cheating for example) , I just don’t understand how that is plausible in any situation.
Overall Caden's point of view was amusing and fun to read, but I felt like having a split POV with Dylan as well would’ve benefited the story and helped to fill in some of the gaps.
( Short / brief review. Perhaps I’ll add more later )
Everyone was just so excepting of the shitty things everyone was doing (Trevor cheating for example) , I just don’t understand how that is plausible in any situation.
Overall Caden's point of view was amusing and fun to read, but I felt like having a split POV with Dylan as well would’ve benefited the story and helped to fill in some of the gaps.
( Short / brief review. Perhaps I’ll add more later )
challenging
hopeful
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I'm going to go on a little tangent to explain my feelings on [b:The Love Interest|31145148|The Love Interest|Cale Dietrich|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1485833541s/31145148.jpg|47243315].
I am a lover of fiction, fantasy and adventure. I love to live in other worlds and believe in the impossible. Therefore, my ability to suspend disbelief is pretty darn good. I can be convinced that a world exists where magic killer unicorns walk the land and wreak havoc with their magic killer unicorn powers. Easy. Where my suspension of disbelief falters, however, is in the details. The hows and the whys. If, say, some authority figure in this world ordered that every woman must marry one of these killer unicorns because, um, it's for the good of the, um, land... then I start to see the cracks.
In short, I can be convinced of any "what" as long as the "why" adds up. As long as there is, in fact, a "why". More tangent if you'd like:
And that's the problem with this book. If you are the kind of reader who asks questions and notices when plot choices are illogical, then parts of [b:The Love Interest|31145148|The Love Interest|Cale Dietrich|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1485833541s/31145148.jpg|47243315] will seem really jarring. Parts of the premise are flawed because they just don't make sense.
Contrary to the shelving I've seen around, this is a kind of dystopian novel. It imagines a world where a secret spy organization plants their spies (known as Love Interests) with anyone important or influential - presidents, CEOs, celebrities, etc. - and attempts to gather information from them. To up their chances of successfully making their target fall in love with the Love Interests, they send two LIs to compete for the person's affection. So far, so good, right? A little implausible, but then all the best books are.
The thing that doesn't make any sense is why they send one "Nice" (a sweet, guy-next-door type) and one "Bad" (a devilish smirking bad boy). I get that it's supposed to be making fun of the YA trope, but it makes no logical sense within the story. There is no explanation for it, and it repeatedly pulled me out of the book's world.
That is the biggest fundamental flaw, but there are a myriad other small things scattered throughout that just seemed poorly-conceived. Stupid things like: why are they starving and sharing tuna out of a can in the later chapters of the novel? I get that they don't want their credit card to be traced, but last time I checked, McDonald's (and, like, everywhere) takes cash. And they had cash, just to be clear.
AND the antagonists are so conveniently bad at everything. They are especially poor at surveillance and tracking, going offline exactly when Caden needs them to. This is a huge, old, and extremely powerful organization, apparently, but they never show it. It's kind of embarrassing how.
In this particular Love Interest scenario, a girl called Juliet is the target and her two Love Interests are Caden (the "Nice", and the narrator) and Dylan (the "Bad"). They must compete for her affection and the loser will be incinerated. However, something unexpected happens-- Caden finds himself developing feelings for none other than his rival.
I don't think it was the best decision to have Caden as the lone narrator. He lacked the charisma needed to drive the novel's narrative and his voice was as bland and unremarkable as his LI character was supposed to be (honestly, why someone would think any person would be attracted to a doormat I do not know). It would have been good to get Dylan's perspective to shake things up a bit.
I would love to see more YA books subverting the traditional love triangle trope, but this wasn't the favourite I'd hoped it would be. I struggled to believe in this concept from the start and Caden was never interesting enough to pull me in.
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I am a lover of fiction, fantasy and adventure. I love to live in other worlds and believe in the impossible. Therefore, my ability to suspend disbelief is pretty darn good. I can be convinced that a world exists where magic killer unicorns walk the land and wreak havoc with their magic killer unicorn powers. Easy. Where my suspension of disbelief falters, however, is in the details. The hows and the whys. If, say, some authority figure in this world ordered that every woman must marry one of these killer unicorns because, um, it's for the good of the, um, land... then I start to see the cracks.
In short, I can be convinced of any "what" as long as the "why" adds up. As long as there is, in fact, a "why". More tangent if you'd like:
Spoiler
This is actually why I think Stephen King is a great writer. I think he has a special talent for normalizing the supernatural and unbelievable. In books like [b:11/22/63|10644930|11/22/63|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327876792s/10644930.jpg|15553789] and [b:Revival|20926278|Revival|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1394651975s/20926278.jpg|27239641], he takes bizarre, out-of-this-world concepts and blends them seamlessly with such a natural, realistic setting. I think he is exceptionally convincing in the way he frames his fantastical elements.And that's the problem with this book. If you are the kind of reader who asks questions and notices when plot choices are illogical, then parts of [b:The Love Interest|31145148|The Love Interest|Cale Dietrich|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1485833541s/31145148.jpg|47243315] will seem really jarring. Parts of the premise are flawed because they just don't make sense.
Contrary to the shelving I've seen around, this is a kind of dystopian novel. It imagines a world where a secret spy organization plants their spies (known as Love Interests) with anyone important or influential - presidents, CEOs, celebrities, etc. - and attempts to gather information from them. To up their chances of successfully making their target fall in love with the Love Interests, they send two LIs to compete for the person's affection. So far, so good, right? A little implausible, but then all the best books are.
The thing that doesn't make any sense is why they send one "Nice" (a sweet, guy-next-door type) and one "Bad" (a devilish smirking bad boy). I get that it's supposed to be making fun of the YA trope, but it makes no logical sense within the story. There is no explanation for it, and it repeatedly pulled me out of the book's world.
That is the biggest fundamental flaw, but there are a myriad other small things scattered throughout that just seemed poorly-conceived. Stupid things like: why are they starving and sharing tuna out of a can in the later chapters of the novel? I get that they don't want their credit card to be traced, but last time I checked, McDonald's (and, like, everywhere) takes cash. And they had cash, just to be clear.
AND the antagonists are so conveniently bad at everything. They are especially poor at surveillance and tracking, going offline exactly when Caden needs them to. This is a huge, old, and extremely powerful organization, apparently, but they never show it. It's kind of embarrassing how
Spoiler
easy it is for five teens to take them downIn this particular Love Interest scenario, a girl called Juliet is the target and her two Love Interests are Caden (the "Nice", and the narrator) and Dylan (the "Bad"). They must compete for her affection and the loser will be incinerated. However, something unexpected happens-- Caden finds himself developing feelings for none other than his rival.
I don't think it was the best decision to have Caden as the lone narrator. He lacked the charisma needed to drive the novel's narrative and his voice was as bland and unremarkable as his LI character was supposed to be (honestly, why someone would think any person would be attracted to a doormat I do not know). It would have been good to get Dylan's perspective to shake things up a bit.
I would love to see more YA books subverting the traditional love triangle trope, but this wasn't the favourite I'd hoped it would be. I struggled to believe in this concept from the start and Caden was never interesting enough to pull me in.
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This was my Book of the Month subscription pick for May and it was probably one of my least favorite books I have read in a long time. It claims to subvert the cliched love triangle trope in a satirical and clever fashion, but I found that not to be true at all. Instead it is a book that drags on for way too long, making absolutely no sense even within its own fictionalized universe. The writing was mediocre at best and the characters were bland and uninteresting.
The Love Interest is a book that has been on my mind for months because its concept is completely original and it sounded so much fun, so I already knew which book I had to pick up in May.
And I read it as planned. However, my feedback isn't the one I thought I would have.
And before anything, let me tell you this: I liked The Love Interest. It was an overall good book that worked around this fantastic idea that there's an organization that locks people away - so they can work to be the best physical version of themselves - and then assigns them to become close with important people, or even their loved ones, and share the secrets that they gather. It's like they're spies. And at this point, everything's good, but the book complicates things.
So, first let's talk about what I liked more about The Love Interest.
The organization itself was an incredible and well-done concept. The author came up with an original and complex idea of an organization that profits from secrets that are shared though relationships that were manipulated from the very beginning.
The LGBT romance between the main characters - Caden and Dylan - was another amazing quality, not only because of the diversity aspect, but also because they're both spies who are trying to make a girl fall in love with one of them, so the perspective of them falling in love with each other instead sounds so much fun! Regarding Caden and Dylan's relationship, I really liked them together - until I stopped enjoying the story, because nothing made sense anymore.
So, what happen? There's a point in the book where the story changes its direction completely and goes off into something that - for me at least - doesn't make a lot of sense with what the author wrote in the first half of the book. And I don't think that that sudden shift worked well for the book itself.
There was something else that I also didn't liked: after the sudden shift, the story takes off at an incredible speed. Everything happens so fast, and what should have taken longer is actually what happens in a couple of chapters. That didn't work for me, since it made the climax seem unrealistic.
So, briefly The Love Interest could have been an easy 5 stars book, if it hadn't shift completely from the plot and if it hadn't finished the story prematurely.
READ THE REST OF MY THOUGHTS HERE: http://www.thebooktarian.com/2017/05/blog-tour-review-favorite-quotes_11.html (ENGLISH REVIEW)
And I read it as planned. However, my feedback isn't the one I thought I would have.
And before anything, let me tell you this: I liked The Love Interest. It was an overall good book that worked around this fantastic idea that there's an organization that locks people away - so they can work to be the best physical version of themselves - and then assigns them to become close with important people, or even their loved ones, and share the secrets that they gather. It's like they're spies. And at this point, everything's good, but the book complicates things.
So, first let's talk about what I liked more about The Love Interest.
The organization itself was an incredible and well-done concept. The author came up with an original and complex idea of an organization that profits from secrets that are shared though relationships that were manipulated from the very beginning.
The LGBT romance between the main characters - Caden and Dylan - was another amazing quality, not only because of the diversity aspect, but also because they're both spies who are trying to make a girl fall in love with one of them, so the perspective of them falling in love with each other instead sounds so much fun! Regarding Caden and Dylan's relationship, I really liked them together - until I stopped enjoying the story, because nothing made sense anymore.
So, what happen? There's a point in the book where the story changes its direction completely and goes off into something that - for me at least - doesn't make a lot of sense with what the author wrote in the first half of the book. And I don't think that that sudden shift worked well for the book itself.
There was something else that I also didn't liked: after the sudden shift, the story takes off at an incredible speed. Everything happens so fast, and what should have taken longer is actually what happens in a couple of chapters. That didn't work for me, since it made the climax seem unrealistic.
So, briefly The Love Interest could have been an easy 5 stars book, if it hadn't shift completely from the plot and if it hadn't finished the story prematurely.
READ THE REST OF MY THOUGHTS HERE: http://www.thebooktarian.com/2017/05/blog-tour-review-favorite-quotes_11.html (ENGLISH REVIEW)
Feels clique, but it's rarely seen. Like the plot choices.
Okay, so I finally got my hands on this! And you know what? It was amazing, fight me if you wish.
I was kind of worried after the first reviews came in after the release. Such a disappointment, bla bla bla, so I was ready for this to go to hell but still had hope god dammit.
And yes!! YESSSSSS this worked for me. Let me quote Emi Miranda's review for a bit here:
This was never going to be a serious book! Why are y'all geting your panties in the twist over the not realistic things and messy plot? Seriously, the whole point of this book was to parody the genre, it's so meta I can't even.
And you expected dark backstory and even darker current events? Oh yes, nothing more sets up a joke about YA tropes than basically brainwashed and enslaved characters. That would be sooo fun.
I think you can tell, I'm enjoying my salty gay tea here. So get over it. Either you are ready to embrace silliness on all acounts from this book or just don't read it at all. I'm quite sad that this is geting so many bad ratings, because it's good on it's own way!
So let's get to the point: IT WAS EVERYTHING I WANTED.
* I don't think Caden was boring
* I totally went down with that ship and his chemistry with Dyl was amazing
* Juliet was amazing!! She has a mad scientist lab! AND IS WORKING ON A BLACK WIDOW SUIT??! I'm sorry, I need a second to breathe.
*Couldn't stop reading, finished the book in 7 hours
* Don't even start me on part II ending, that sucker punch right in the guts got me doubling over with feels. I think I walked it off for at least 10 minutes
*The perfect writing on Caden realising he has more than platonic feelings and suddenly understanding some encounters from the past. Hell to the yeah, #ownvoices!
Yes, yes, this didn't get 5 stars, because there were some messy things.
*some dialogues were very awkward [but after a while I just written that off to meta. That indeed sounded like pretentious paranormal YA novel from the year 2010.]
*partIII sudenly kicked in all the action and "bigger things" so it felt like I was reading an ending for a different book.
*for a while I was annoyed by the unlogical procedure to kill the unsuccessful Love Interests, but they kind of referred to it in the end.
So yeah, it was a wild ride, and maybe not in the way I was expecting but I certainly enjoyed it and regret nothing.
I was kind of worried after the first reviews came in after the release. Such a disappointment, bla bla bla, so I was ready for this to go to hell but still had hope god dammit.
And yes!! YESSSSSS this worked for me. Let me quote Emi Miranda's review for a bit here:
This book was the YA equivalent to a low budget movie. Within the first few pages, I realized this and changed all my expectations. This wasn't going to be a James Bond film. Instead, it was gonna be that one spy movie starring Hailee Steinfeld and the girl from Game of Thrones .
This was never going to be a serious book! Why are y'all geting your panties in the twist over the not realistic things and messy plot? Seriously, the whole point of this book was to parody the genre, it's so meta I can't even.
And you expected dark backstory and even darker current events? Oh yes, nothing more sets up a joke about YA tropes than basically brainwashed and enslaved characters. That would be sooo fun.
I think you can tell, I'm enjoying my salty gay tea here. So get over it. Either you are ready to embrace silliness on all acounts from this book or just don't read it at all. I'm quite sad that this is geting so many bad ratings, because it's good on it's own way!
So let's get to the point: IT WAS EVERYTHING I WANTED.
* I don't think Caden was boring
* I totally went down with that ship and his chemistry with Dyl was amazing
* Juliet was amazing!! She has a mad scientist lab! AND IS WORKING ON A BLACK WIDOW SUIT??! I'm sorry, I need a second to breathe.
*Couldn't stop reading, finished the book in 7 hours
* Don't even start me on part II ending, that sucker punch right in the guts got me doubling over with feels. I think I walked it off for at least 10 minutes
*The perfect writing on Caden realising he has more than platonic feelings and suddenly understanding some encounters from the past. Hell to the yeah, #ownvoices!
Yes, yes, this didn't get 5 stars, because there were some messy things.
*some dialogues were very awkward [but after a while I just written that off to meta. That indeed sounded like pretentious paranormal YA novel from the year 2010.]
*partIII sudenly kicked in all the action and "bigger things" so it felt like I was reading an ending for a different book.
*for a while I was annoyed by the unlogical procedure to kill the unsuccessful Love Interests, but they kind of referred to it in the end.
So yeah, it was a wild ride, and maybe not in the way I was expecting but I certainly enjoyed it and regret nothing.