A review by fishreads
Bet You by Neve Wilder

2.5

Spencer Crow, the hardworking nerd of the story is the ecology major who just recently moved into one of the group houses on campus. Unfortunately for Spencer, Life Sciences Living and Learning (LaL) house in question is situated right next to the Delta Iota Kappa (DIK) frat house. Constant noise of the frat house parties and inconsiderate frat guys parking in Spencer's assigned parking spot are slowly starting to drive Spencer insane.

Cory Ingram, one of the rich privileged campus crowd, is studying communications/advertising/marketing (I am blanking out on his major) so he can continue in his parents' footsteps working in their highly successful advertising company, and just happens to be the latest frat guy who parked his flashy car in Spencer's spot.

Their first meeting is an argument over said spot, where Spencer is annoyed with Cory being an entitled jackass and Cory is intrigued by the hot guy he did not notice until that point and he did not sleep with yet. While Cory is all for correcting that fact, Spencer does not want anything to do with Cory. So in a typical frat guy move Cory makes a bet with his frat brothers and starts his campaign of annoying Spencer into sleeping with him.

Spencer for his part is not as unaffected with Cory as he pretends to be, after inadvertently discovering he has the perfect view into Cory's room from his window and witnessing Cory hooking up with another guy he starts spying on Cory's (solo) bedroom actives. Soon enough he starts feeling guilty about it and goes to apologize to Cory (without admitting his transgression) except Cory does not let him of the hook and instead ropes him into going on a double date

and having a mutual masturbation session in front of their windows

. They start hooking up but just as they start developing feelings for each other Spencer learns about the bet and does not want anything to do with Cory ever again.

As much as I looked forward to the next installation in the FU series and I initially found the summary interesting enough I really just wasn't feeling either of the characters in this one. My first impressions of Spencer and Cory were pretentious and a horny asshole respectively. Not feeling even remotely invested in the main characters also did not make me particularly enamored with the overall plot. As I tried reading and quickly gave up on this author's books in the past I wasn't surprised when the whole voyeurism/subsequent exhibitionism set up did not work for me as it was overtly sexual while lacking in substance.

The only part that did work for me was the fall out after Spencer found out about the bet and Cory's subsequent grovelling. Even that plot point felt like it was resolved too quickly and I wasn't a fan of the big resolution scene

of Cory doing a Tom Holland Singing in the Rain/Umbrella act on stage for Spencer. While it made sense that Spencer being a part of fandom would be a fan of Tom Holland's act it did not leave such a lasting impression on me as it did on him. I had to go look for it on youtube in order to jog my memory of it even happening which kind of negated the whole premise of it being particularly memorable in the first place

. 

I did not have high expectations going into this story so I can't say I was surprised by the fact that it did not work for me. However, as we're halfway through this series I am starting to lose hope that I will find any of the stories genuinely enjoyable instead just being of another installment to simply cross out from the to read list for the sake of being a completionist.

Themes: dual POV, nerd/frat guy, animosity, voyeurism, exhibitionism, ill-advised bets