Scan barcode
iamdr_rn's review
2.0
**spoiler alert** Reviewed for Romancing Rakes for the Love of Romance:
Ruby Cotton is a girl who has decided that she isn't looking for a serious relationship. Being burned before means that she's determined to seek out fun and easy flings. The implication, I suppose, being that relationships are neither easy (true) nor fun (not true). To this end, she's avoided all of the guys that go to her hoity-toity university full of rich pretty kids that have never had to work for anything in their lives--and who apparently look down their noses are her, since her family is "new money"--and instead decided that her acting partner is the best choice to fit her "fun and easy" needs.
More power to the girl! Personally it's nice to see a heroine at this age that is firmly taking control of her sexuality.
Or it would be, except her reasoning behind her decision is kind of difficult to get behind.
Ruby hates it when people make assumptions about her (especially when those assumptions are linked to her family's new-money status), and yet she freely makes assumptions about everyone left and right. Her freshman-year boyfriend dumped her because his parents didn't approve of her--she presumes. From that experience, she has decided that every guy at her university will behave in the same manner. It's a perfect representation of once burned, twice shy.
Since she's decided her soul mate can't exist on school grounds, she seeks out a fun, sex-only relationship with her acting costar. And here's where my belief in her logic takes a bit of a nosedive. Because if she only wants fun sex times, you'd think she wouldn't hang around with a guy who is so…bad at it.
Patience of a saint, this girl.
Meanwhile, Ruby has decided that the guys of her university are far too complacent with their romancing skills, and so she sets up an anonymous website where girls can submit ratings and indicate if they'd refer an ex to another girl. And this is where the hero of the story comes in.
Cole Stuart is honest-to-goodness Scottish royalty, and he pursues Ruby with a determination that is sweet and, I'll be honest, oftentimes baffling. Ruby is consistently prickly and defensive around him…not to mention has a tendency to jump to weird conclusions. At one point she accuses Cole of only coming after her because he wants her to remove his bad ratings from the site...because he'd somehow figured out that she was the one running it. It's a giant leap that pulled me right out of the story.
There were quite a few instances where I stopped reading and had to rant to my cat about the way that Ruby was acting, or the bullshit she was willing to take. She didn't feel consistent, and in the end it meant that I never really connected with her, because I couldn't be sure how she'd react. I felt a stronger connection to Cole, though he was written very much like a too-good-to-be-true hero. Even his great flaw, the reason that he got so many bad reviews, is something that leaves you feeling sympathetic.
In the end, I felt like Ruby was a study in contradictions, and her growth from who she was at the start versus who she became at the end felt uneven. In several spots I asked myself why Cole was even interested in Ruby, considering some of the things she did or said. Her issues with dating rich guys, the manner in which she overcame her hesitation, the resolution of her issues with Cole, all felt very much as if I was being told, rather than shown. My experience with the book suffered for it, and in the end, while I loved the premise, I couldn't love the book itself.
Ruby Cotton is a girl who has decided that she isn't looking for a serious relationship. Being burned before means that she's determined to seek out fun and easy flings. The implication, I suppose, being that relationships are neither easy (true) nor fun (not true). To this end, she's avoided all of the guys that go to her hoity-toity university full of rich pretty kids that have never had to work for anything in their lives--and who apparently look down their noses are her, since her family is "new money"--and instead decided that her acting partner is the best choice to fit her "fun and easy" needs.
More power to the girl! Personally it's nice to see a heroine at this age that is firmly taking control of her sexuality.
Or it would be, except her reasoning behind her decision is kind of difficult to get behind.
Ruby hates it when people make assumptions about her (especially when those assumptions are linked to her family's new-money status), and yet she freely makes assumptions about everyone left and right. Her freshman-year boyfriend dumped her because his parents didn't approve of her--she presumes. From that experience, she has decided that every guy at her university will behave in the same manner. It's a perfect representation of once burned, twice shy.
Since she's decided her soul mate can't exist on school grounds, she seeks out a fun, sex-only relationship with her acting costar. And here's where my belief in her logic takes a bit of a nosedive. Because if she only wants fun sex times, you'd think she wouldn't hang around with a guy who is so…bad at it.
Patience of a saint, this girl.
Meanwhile, Ruby has decided that the guys of her university are far too complacent with their romancing skills, and so she sets up an anonymous website where girls can submit ratings and indicate if they'd refer an ex to another girl. And this is where the hero of the story comes in.
Cole Stuart is honest-to-goodness Scottish royalty, and he pursues Ruby with a determination that is sweet and, I'll be honest, oftentimes baffling. Ruby is consistently prickly and defensive around him…not to mention has a tendency to jump to weird conclusions. At one point she accuses Cole of only coming after her because he wants her to remove his bad ratings from the site...because he'd somehow figured out that she was the one running it. It's a giant leap that pulled me right out of the story.
There were quite a few instances where I stopped reading and had to rant to my cat about the way that Ruby was acting, or the bullshit she was willing to take. She didn't feel consistent, and in the end it meant that I never really connected with her, because I couldn't be sure how she'd react. I felt a stronger connection to Cole, though he was written very much like a too-good-to-be-true hero. Even his great flaw, the reason that he got so many bad reviews, is something that leaves you feeling sympathetic.
In the end, I felt like Ruby was a study in contradictions, and her growth from who she was at the start versus who she became at the end felt uneven. In several spots I asked myself why Cole was even interested in Ruby, considering some of the things she did or said. Her issues with dating rich guys, the manner in which she overcame her hesitation, the resolution of her issues with Cole, all felt very much as if I was being told, rather than shown. My experience with the book suffered for it, and in the end, while I loved the premise, I couldn't love the book itself.
More...