Reviews

2.75 i’m too bored and annoyed to really go into details but it’s my second book from this series and damn does the author like her ridiculous teenage drama
the characters aren’t likeable, together or apart, and they think they’re romeo and juliet when they’re just
brainless

another thing this author likes is her double standards and i don’t f with that

marjreads_'s review against another edition

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1.0

DNF

nicolewashere's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful lighthearted sad tense medium-paced

4.75

yourgirltone's review against another edition

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4.0

Close to Me really makes you think about your life. You don't realize how good you have it until you find someone close to you that hides it well.

criticallyromantic's review against another edition

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1.0

"Ash and I are a total cliché." ~ Autumn.

Accurate.

Oof. This blurb does not represent this book. Like. Seriously. Also, heads up, I say "shit" a lot in this review. You've been warned.

This is another one of those times where I feel like I read a different book than other reviewers because I just did not like this book at all. It had a great premise and for maybe the first half I actually thought I was really going to enjoy it and it was going to go somewhere good. And then.

Autumn... What can I say about Autumn? I can't stand Autumn and I seriously suspect she's the #1 reason I didn't like this book. She is definitely the biggest problem with the story, in my opinion. I can actually forgive a lot of things in teenage girls in books, because I remember being a teenage girl and how absolutely unhinged with emotions girls can be at that time, but Autumn was just absurd and there was no real reason for it. Her whining and tendency to fall, completely without any reasonable explanation, into HE DOESN'T WANT ME, HE'S JUST MESSING WITH ME just completely wore me out throughout this book. Honestly, I just hated her and I think that the fact that her wishy washy shittiness and tendency to invent angst was really sort of the driving conflict of the story is what made it fall flat for me.

I felt like Asher could have been really interesting, but in the context of the story, his relationship with Awful Autumn, and the fact that he sort of devolved into a stereotype of the tortured teenage guy who has JUSTSOMANYFEELINGS and doesn't know what to do with them just made him really off putting to me. Also, to be really honest, I feel like if you're going to have a character who's super tortured with this really bad home life and all of these problems, but he's a solid student and a star football player... you've gotta explain that somehow. Not saying it can't happen, but it certainly wasn't believable here.

Generally, I really like the whole forced proximity trope, I feel like it's a good driving force for a romance novel, but in this one it just rubbed me wrong. Autumn's family was just weird and written in a way that didn't make a single bit of sense to me. There was a real lack of consistency with her parents who were sometimes a little too cool with everything and other times overly conservative. Also, the way her mother talked to Asher made me seriously uncomfortable. I think it was supposed to be like... supportive or something, but it just felt creepy and without boundaries. Her brother, though consistent in his characterization, was very much the same kind of shitty that his sister was, without any believable motivation for it.

I almost DNF'd this book at about 75% when OF COURSE there was another scenario of invented angst that didn't even a little bit make me care about the story or the characters or believe for a second that it would have any bearing on the story - and it didn't. And then at 79% Autumn made me hate her even more with her shitty, flailing angst demon on an inner monologue, so I almost DNF'd again. At 89% when the book took another ridiculous left turn into crazytown, I jotted down in my notes, "Fuck this book. Why am I forcing myself to finish this trash fire?" Seriously, I don't know if it's because I was just so over it at that point, but the closer I got to the end, the more I loathed this book.

Ugh, I'm getting angry writing this review, so I'm just going to stop. There's not much more I can add, I feel like I've really underlined my feelings on this book.

Anyway, lots of people did like this book, if the reviews are anything to go on, so maybe you'll like it too? I don't know. I certainly can't recommend it because I truly, truly hate it. So there's that.

gabbysreading's review against another edition

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3.0

3.5 stars

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