When Bad Books Happen to People Who Don't Download the Sample First: A Cautionary Tale.

The note from the author says that it's a revised version containing corrections of previous grammatical errors, but my guess is that what it doesn't say is that they added new ones. Either that, or the old version was just a bunch of random words. The grammatical construction is so bad I was laughing on page 2 and crying on page 3. And I am as far from the grammar police as it gets.

So now I'm not only thinking about the "kill it with fire" shelf, I'm also considering the "monkeys with red pens make poor editors" shelf.

While I enjoyed reading this and found parts gripping, there were other things that really irritated me. The good:
I cared about the characters. Maggie's life is just heart-breaking. Seth was the kind of hero that can do no wrong. Booker was the quirky and funny best friend. The plot was gripping in parts.
The irritating:
Maggie does incredibly stupid things (how often did she have to be told not to undo the security systems?!). Having a 21 year old being an undercover agent in a high school is kind of creepy. Seth was a little too perfect to be believable. Parents are either non-functioning or dead. High school stereotypes abound.

All that being said, several of my eighth-graders have loved this book.

Areas of concern: It had a definite "creepy" factor. Different points of view are heard in the book, mostly just Maggie and Seth, but a couple of chapters are from the points of view of 2 grisly murderers. I don't remember any cussing. There is plenty of kissing, but Seth declares his intent to "wait until marriage", so otherwise it was a very clean romance. ( )

I was gifted a copy from the author for an honest review. What a wonderful story with promise of it being a series. You’ll find your heart in deep with this book as you want only the best for the main characters. Maggie keeps a wall around her from the experiences she has with her alcoholic mother. She struggles daily with survival. While in school, one of the students, Seth has started paying attention to her and he’s someone she’s had a secret crush on for a long while. But what could he honestly see in someone like her, especially from a girl that lives in a trailer and doesn’t have money when he has the opposite of what she has? Seth is a member of MET. He’s on assignment at the Port Fare School to find out who the main drug dealer is that is causing deaths. He as well is investigating murdered young girls in the area. He feels drawn to Maggie but she isn’t going to let him into her life so easily no matter what her heart tells her. When he is assigned to get to know her, he isn’t sure if he can hide who he really is with her, let alone his feelings for her. This is a very well written story and one so worth the read. You’ll find yourself so wrapped up in the story you won’t put it down till you’ve read it all. Thank you for this great story Ms. Gammon and thank you for sharing it with us. ( )

I first saw Unlovable being reviewed by Nic at Irresistible Reads. Her review along with the tile and the cover drew me in to wanting to pick it up.

I normally don’t read thrillers too often. I wouldn’t say it is a favorite genre of mine, but I’m always willing to try anything. To me, the thriller aspect to the story was in the background and the romance between Maggie and Seth was the main focus. At times their romance may have been a bit cheesy, but at the same time they are so adorable together.

Maggie learns many things about love during the telling of her story. The feelings she has of being not worthy of love slowly dissipate as the story moves forward. Her struggle with hunger completely upset me. Children going hungry when they shouldn’t be kills me! It’s a cause I think about daily. I could also connect with Maggie and her battle with her mother being an alcoholic her entire life.

All of the characters, besides the ones who were supposed to be psychotic (yes psychotic), we super sweet and lovable. Many of the secondary characters have hearts of gold.

I had a few questions throughout the story that I was waiting to be answered because I was slightly confused or I wasn’t sure how that was possible, but Sherry Gammon eventually answered all of those for me…Thank you Sherry!

I love dialogue in a story and Sherry gave us TONS of dialogue to read. I should mention more about the thriller aspect to the story. Some parts of it were creepy, but not overly so. I avoid anything scary and I was able to handle all of those particular scenes. ( )

First off, I want to say how AMAZING the cover of this book is. When I saw the cover, I knew I had to read this book. So when the author asked me to review Unlovable for her, I literally flipped out (seriously just ask my sister). So saying that I had very high expectations going into this book is a big understatement. Good thing this book exceeded those expectations by a mile! I loved every single freaking thing about it! Maggie was far from perfect, but I think that's why I liked her so much. She was shy around Seth and very hesitant on who she trusted. But once she warmed up to him, Maggie's relationship with Seth was just so darn cute! They acted so adorable around each other in the book and I couldn't help but be jealous of Maggie having a guy as amazing (and cute) as Seth. This book reminded me of Never Been Kissed (with the whole pretending to be in high school thing) and Going Too far by Jennifer Echols (with the whole falling in love with a cop thing). But what those two didn't have that Unlovable did have was such a thrilling, surprising story. This is NOT the cliche storyline of people falling in love. People die and there are countless visits to the hospital (but with many stolen kisses in between). Needless to say, this book was far from unlovable. And to make things even more awesome, I learned that there's going to be two more books after this! You can definitely count on me being first in line to read these. I don't know how I'm going to last until they come out! Until then though, I highly recommend you get you hands on Unlovable as soon as you can! You won't regret it! ( )