Jenni James

It's not very often that I sit down with a book and not move from my spot until I've read the book cover to cover. But that's what I did with this book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Despite knowing the whole story before I even opened the book, I still felt Chloe's indignation at Taylor's egocentricity, her anger at his ability to constantly get under his skin. And even though I knew there was more to him than meets the eye, I couldn't help but hate him along with Chloe, adding my own show more nonverbal "You go, girl!" every time she said something snotty to him.

But of course, Taylor wins in the end, forcing women everywhere to fall for his many, many charms, the jerk. I'll admit, this fictional character made me swoon. Several times.

And I have to say, Jenni James knows her audience. She writes about teenagers, for teenagers. This may mean that words like "awesome" and "sheez" are WAY overused, but the kids are normal, the events believable. Even though I'm not a teen, I enjoyed this book. Immensely.

It doesn't matter how this story is told—in nineteenth-century England or a modern high school—this story is timeless and will always attract women young and old, no matter how many times they are exposed to it.

Oh, and "Taylor Anderson is a chicken butt!" is one of the funniest lines I've ever read. show less

I was ok with the book but 60 pages in I realized that this author belongs to a fundamentalist religion. There are many authors who are able to keep their specific religion out of a book and focus more on general christianty which is fine. However, I find over and over that authors who are in totalistic and fundamental religions don't do that well. They try but they convey the misogyny and particularly the unequal rules and blame for women that are found in fundamental religions. I was show more raised in a fundamental religion (the same one as the author) which is why I recognized it instantly.

If you don't care about those issues then this book is probably ok. Even without those issues it is still a bit immature and probably better for a younger audience around middle school age. It's cute and clean. While I'm fine clean books, I don't like clean when it also means indoctrination or subtle hints at fundamental religions. It does have at least one rule from the authors religion in it along with general references to "church," etc. I decided not to finish it as I've suffered enough at the hands fundamental religions. show less

The biggest trouble I had with this re-telling of "Persuasion" by Jane Austen was the fact that all the main characters were teens. It's hard to believe that 15 year olds could fall deeply into love at an age when they are still trying to figure themselves out. Overall entertaining.

Hm, not sure how I feel about this. I actually enjoyed it at first but it quickly got weird and it was like super fast paced, the romance happened very quickly only to add some sort of love triangle where the boy she kissed first tells her to kiss the other boy…
And there’s so much going on for such a short book, I eventually just checked out. Like my ears were still listening, but my mind and emotions were not engaged. It was a really strange mix between trauma and boy drama and then show more this utterly perfect boy also happens to have the perfect solution and just saves her from her nightmarish aunt.
I really could have liked this story and I don’t expect YA stories (especially ones inspired by fairy tales) to be extremely realistic, but this just got a bit too ridiculous to be invested in. show less