A review by brokenrecord
From Scratch - Alles neu mit dir by Stacey Kade

3.0

I honestly have no idea how to feel about this book. Like, it is definitely majorly flawed. I feel like I should have hated it. But I kind of got attached to the characters and sucked in by the romance despite myself??? It’s kind of insta-love-y in the sense that they’re in love after only knowing each other a few days, but those days span the entire book, so it felt like their relationship was built up despite the quick timeframe, and I did like watching them gradually open up and get to know one another at first. There is an element of, like, Chase loving Amanda helping her ~heal, but at the same time, it is 2 years after her kidnapping, and in the epilogue it’s revealed that she has been going to a sexual violence survivor’s group for a year and got a new therapist who she trusts more, so like… I didn’t feel like it was an intentional or explicit message that Chase’s love alone made everything fine for her, but it still kind of comes off that way. The plot with the stalker and Chase’s fired/not fired publicist was ridiculous and it felt kind of out of place; I would’ve liked if this had just been kind of a quieter novel of them slowly (meaning not just over the course of a few days but over a longer timeframe) bonding and getting to know each other and Amanda healing through her the sexual violence survivor’s group and her new therapist (rather than that just being tacked on in the epilogue) and Chase’s support (not necessarily his love) without the extra drama going on and Chase hiding things from her the entire time. But I also feel like this book could’ve been a lot worse than it was. So I don’t know -- basically I feel like I shouldn’t have liked any of this at all, but I did end up liking parts of it.