| Title: | My Sweetest Escape | |
|---|---|---|
| Author: | Chelsea M. Cameron | |
| Publisher | Harlequin HQN | |
| Publication Date: | January 28, 2014 | |
| Publisher's Description | The past will always find you Jos Archer was the girl with the perfect life—until the night it all came crashing down around her. Now, nine months later, she still hasn't begun to pick up the pieces. Even transferring to a new college and living under the watchful eye of her older sister, Renee, isn't enough to help her feel normal again. And then she meets Dusty Sharp. For reasons Jos can't begin to fathom, the newly reformed campus bad boy seems determined to draw her out of her shell. And if she's not careful, his knowing green eyes and wicked smile will make her feel things she's no longer sure she deserves. But even as Dusty coaxes Jos to open up about the past, he's hiding secrets of his own. Secrets about the night her old life fell apart. When the truth is finally revealed, will it bring them closer together—or tear them apart for good? |
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| My rating: | *** | |
Neither terrible enough to scar you for life nor well-written enough to be memorable, this story brings nothing new to the New Adult genre. A lot of what happened here felt manufactured and unnecessary. From little things (Dusty is introduced to Jos as Dusty, but she knows his name is Dustin – how?) to looming problems (why is Renee so insane about Jos; one and a half lost semesters hardly explain her jailkeeper mentality toward her only slightly younger sister), so much about this book felt off to me. Dusty was actually a pretty stellar character, although I found his see-sawing to be tiresome and annoying. There’s such a thing as genuine confusion, but at some point, his behavior toward Jos felt needlessly hurtful. Likewise, both of their needs to assume the blame for something that was not their fault made me want to say, “Girls! Girls! You’re both pretty.” (or “Boys! Boys! Your penises are exactly the same length.” I’m not a sexist.)
This is the second book in the series, but I haven’t read the previous titles, so maybe I’d like Renee and the other housemates better if I was already familiar with them. As it was, I found them a bit cloying and far too involved in Jos’ life. Renee I sort of understand, but everybody else needed to take a giant step back and mind their own beeswax. Hannah, who I suspect will be the subject of a future installment in the series, also annoyed me, but for different reasons [Nevermind, just read that this is a two-book series. My apologies!]. She betrayed Jos’s confidences twice; while I know that this came from a good place and the results were ultimately favorable, if I were Jos I’d never tell Hannah anything that I didn’t want anybody else to know.
If you’ve already read the previous book in this series, I would think that you’d like to read this one, too, but reading this book left me with no desire to read the previous title.
I received this book free of charge from Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review and my last clean pair of undies.
This book has a lot of things going for it. First, Maggie is completely believable as a 20 year old protagonist. She’s not impossibly sophisticated, even considering that she is raised by this universe’s answer to Faith Hill and Tim McGraw (so maybe keep it zipped, Tim, mmmkay?). Second, country music is not a genre that is overly represented in fiction in general, and it’s nice that no character in this book is actively trying to be Taylor Swift. Third, this is one of the least trigger-inducing New Adult novels that I have ever read. I appreciated that Maggie has to overcome several real things that don’t involve blunt force trauma or parental death. There’s a lot of hard stuff happening in Maggie’s life, but it feels manageable for her and for an audience of readers to deal with. Fourth, Maggie is kind of a brat. That doesn’t seem like a compliment, but really, it’s all tied into my first point, and it helped me believe that this is a story about a young woman who is growing up and experiencing any number of life-changing events in a brief amount of time. Even when I wanted to shake her and then put her in time out, I believed in the pettiness and immaturity at the heart of her actions and words. Fifth, I love the role that words play in this novel. I mean, duh. Yes, the books that I review here generally feature a lot of words, but for these characters, expression is especially important. They can’t always do it, either through language or music. What is not said is often at least as important as what is said.
