If I Fall by Anna Cruise

Title: If I Fall
Author: Anna Cruise
Pages: 322
Publication Date: April 6, 2013
Publisher: Mission Bay Publishing

The Basic Summary: After her parents' divorce, Megan's life completely falls apart. With no one there to help her pick up the pieces, Megan is left to put herself back together. Enter Aidan. He's the perfect boyfriend, he makes her laugh, he makes her feel beautiful, and most importantly, he's the only one that's there for Megan. As time goes on, Megan learns that Aidan isn't what he seems, and as she falls deeper into his lifestyle, she loses herself a little bit more. Can she save herself before she falls in too deep?

My Review: *frustrated sigh* If the author had handled this book differently, it could have been an amazing book, but she didn't, so it wasn't. I've dealt with divorce, so I know how horrible it feels when it happens. It feels like your entire world is falling out from under you, and everything you thought you knew about your life is wrong. Basically, you feel lost. Because of that, it was easy for Aidan to take advantage of Megan. That part I understand, what I don't understand, however, is how easily everyone in her life gave up on Megan.

After the divorce, Megan's mother falls into deep depression and alcoholism. What bothers me about her mother is that NO ONE in Megan's life really bothered to check on her mother or Megan for a few weeks. Her aunt came in once, made Megan's mother get dressed, figured they were fine, and took off. After that, it was a while before anyone checked again. Her Aunt Sara eventually came back, sent Megan's mother to get some help, and moved in with Megan, after Megan got into trouble with her father. Another thing that bothered me about the situation with Megan and her mother was that Megan didn't care about her mother. When she did bring her mother up, it was usually to bring attention to how fat her mother was. The way Megan talked about her mother was awful.

At the beginning of the book, Megan's friends were there to support her through the divorce, but once she started liking Aidan, they gave up on her. They were incredibly judgemental, an dthey didn't really listen to her or care about what she wanted. When Megan finally stopped hanging out with them and started hanging around Aidan and his friends, instead of trying to get Megan back and talk to her about it, her friends started calling her stupid and a slut. Great friends, huh? When my parents got divorced, I pretty much fell apart, and for a while, all I could do was cry. I'm sure I wasn't fun to be around, but my friends never abandoned me. In fact, they went out of their way to make sure that I knew that I was loved. At the beginning of the book, Cruise kept talking about how Megan and her friends were so close, and how they'd known each other for years, but that's not how they acted. If you've been best friends with someone since childhood, and you're very close, they don't abandon you when things get tough the way Megan's friends did. They just don't. I didn't believe in the bonds of their friendship because they weren't really there. We were told that they were there, but we never saw them for ourselves.

What bothered me a lot about Megan was  how quickly she changed. I understand that she was lost, but seriously? One hour she's a good girl hanging out with her friends and just talking, and literally an hour later, she's drinking, lying to the police, and practically having sex in a car with a guy she doesn't know. I don't care who you are, or what happened. No one completely changes in an hour. From there, Megan just gets worse. After the car hookup, Megan goes out with Aidan (the random guy) again the next weekend, they go to a party, get drunk, and he rapes her. The rape itself pissed me the fuck off because the author didn't treat it like rape. Megan said No and Aidan covered her mouth and continued to have sex with her. Afterwards Aidan apologizes for taking her virginity, and she forgives him. She didn't tell him he raped her, she didn't get mad that he took something she didn't want to give. She just went "Well.. He did say sorry." and went home with  Aidan and smoked weed and slept with him again. Megan's transformation from a good girl into a delinquent wasn't at all believable. Cruise rushed it too much, and the entire thing just felt forced. Even more annoying was how Megan transformed from a bad girl to a good girl in a span of minutes at the end of the book, and how everyone acted like her having sex WITHOUT PROTECTION, drinking, breaking things, lying, sneaking out, skipping school, not doing homework, failing her classes, and doing drugs just never happened. Sure she was grounded by her aunt, but her aunt didn't address any of the things that Meg did. It was just "You lied to me and went to a party with your boyfriend, so you're grounded now." After a conversation with Case during her grounding, Megan decided that Case was right and she needed to stop doing all of the bad things she was doing, so she just quit. No, just no. Megan didn't decide for HERSELF that what she was doing was wrong. Case told her, and she basically went "Case said it's wrong, so it must be!" and then changed herself. Megan never actually thought for herself throughout the entire book. She just did everything everyone told her, but Cruise wants us to believe that Meg is a strong character? No.

Aidan was a douche. There's no nice way to say it. He introduced Megan to alcohol, drugs, and unprotected sex, but Cruise never really tried to make him sound like a bad guy. He was constantly guilting Megan into doing things, and towards the end of the book, he even cheated on her. At the end when Megan tried to leave him, he turned all psycho-boyfriend and told her that "We're not over until I say we're over." This pissed me off too because instead of Megan telling someone about this, she pretty much just went "Eh. I'll try again later." If a guy you're dating tells you that he's refusing to let you leave him, that's a huge issue. That's not something that you just ignore.

The only person I liked was Case, because he was the only person who was actually consistently there for Megan through it all even though she didn't realize it until the end. The one thing I don't like about the relationship between Case and Megan, is how sudden it all was. For 90% of the book, Megan kept insisting that she was in love with Aidan, but at the end, she suddenly realizes she has deep feelings for Case, and that he has deep feelings for her, and they get together. The problem with this is that we didn't see them develop deep feelings for each other at all. Once again, we were just told that they care for each other. We never actually got to see them grow to care for each other.

Basically, Cruise created a plethora of issues for Megan to deal with in this book, but Megan didn't actually deal with them. Megan fucked around for 4/5 of the book, and for the last 1/5th, everything somehow resolved itself with little to no impact on Megan. It just wasn't realistic. If you do drugs, have sex MULTIPLE TIMES without ANY protection, drink, fail your classes, and lie to the people who trust you, there are going to be REAL consequences. Was she grounded? Yes. But considering all of the dangerous things Megan was doing, that consequence is compeltely unrealistic. If you have sex without condoms or birth control repeatedly, you're going to get pregnant. Megan and Aidan had sex without condoms for MONTHS, and nothing happened to her. No STDs, no pregnancy, nothing. She did a multitude of drugs, drank a ton of alcohol, made it sound like she was addicted (she was constantly talking about how she needed *insert substance here* to cope), but she was able to quit all of it cold turkey and never thought about it again. She ditched her classes, failed tests, failed to turn in homework, but somehow none of this was ever brought up again, and it sounds as if there were no consequences for her failing her sophomore year of high school. It just wasn't realistic.

My Overall Opinion: I didn't like this book. I don't think the author handled ANY of the issues she brought up in a good way, and the fact that Megan faced no consequences for all of the things she did that year just makes no sense. If you have unprotected sex, drink, do drugs, and fail school there are going to be consequences. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone because it's just not a good book. In fact, it's awful.

A Million Dirty Secrets by C.L. Parker

Title: A Million Dirty Secrets
Author: C.L. Parker
Pages: 368
Publication Date:August 27, 2013
Publisher: Bantam

**ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

The Basic Summary: In order to save her mother's life, Delanie Talbot sells herself into sexual slavery. Enter her owner for the next 2 year, Noah Crawford. What follows is a journey of self-discovery for both Lanie and Noah, and the chance of unexpected love.

My Review: Reading this book was like watching a horrific train wreck happen. You're sitting there, jaw dropped in a horrible sort of fascination, and you know that you should look away, but you can't. So instead, you watch the train wreck happen because you can't not look. The first page of this book was filled with slut-shaming, which is when I knew that I should really put down this book and walk away. Some of you may not know this, but in addition to my shallow cover hoarding, I also lack self-control and a sense of self-preservation. I know something is bad, and I know that I should stop, but I can't help myself. One part of me is sitting there going "Hah, Ade you are such a wuss. Yea you wuss! You're going to put down this book aren't you? Why? Because YOU CAN'T TAKE IT!" Another part of me is like "Bring it, bitch! I am going to kick your ass!" and the last part of me is like "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TWO DOING!? STOP IT!" I rarely listen to the 3rd part of me. What was the point of that? To let you know what goes on in my head when I don't DNF a book that I really should DNF.

Let's start with Lanie. Lanie is an idiot. There's no getting around it. She's just stupid. We're supposed to believe that she's a mature 24 year old, but she's not. The book immediately starts off with Lanie slut-shaming other women, and just gets worse from there. She uses phrases like "moo juice" "coco yumminess" "eager beaver" and "googly moogly" on a regular basis. She even refers to her vagina as "Double Agent Coochie" and to Noah's penis as "Wonder Peen." How many 24 year olds do you know that act like that? Personally, I know none. Lanie selling her body was supposed to make us feel sympathetic towards her, but it didn't really work out that way. At first it was *a little* sad, but the sympathy quickly ran out becuase she acts like an idiot. I know we were supposed to like her, but between the slut-shaming, the weird thoughts she had regarding Noel and sex, and all of the phrases she used, she was just incredibly unlikeable.

Noah was.. he was a misogynistic douche schnozzle. He thinks with his penis, and that's about it. Occasionally he'll remember that there's another head that he can think with, but any thoughts that came from the brain in his other head were quickly brushed aside by the head in his pants. If I'm being completely honest,Noah's character was.. bland. His only defining characteristic was that he was  jerk. Oh, and can I just say that it's annoying that he somehow had the time to gain the skill level of a concert pianist? From what Noah said in the book, he was too busy drinking and fucking up when he was young to do anything else. There was no mention of him playing piano, or any other instrument, until Lanie discovered he had a music room and he proceeded to woo her with his piano skills. At least FSoG provided a bit of a back story regarding the piano. This book just threw it in there with no warning.

The sex scenes were awful. There's no nice way to say it. They were weird and awkward, and half of the "sexy" things they did weren't actually sexy. It got to the point where I just started skimming the sex scenes because they were so bad.

My Overall Opinion: I honestly thought this book was horrible, but maybe that's just me. The characters weren't likeable, the story sucked, and the sex scenes read like they were written by a honry 15 year old boy. I personally think that the book was just bad all around, but y'all can read it and find out for yourselves.

My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick

Title: My Life Next Door
Author: Huntley Fitzpatrick
Pages: 304
Publication Date: June 14th 2012
Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers

The Basic Summary: If you didn't know her, it would seem that Samantha Reed has the perfect life. She's pretty, does well in school, and her family has money. Samantha should be content, but she's not. Samantha often finds herself on her room, spying on the neighbors next door. The Garrett's are everything that Samantha and her family are not. Loud, close, and numerous. For years, Sam has been spying on the Garrett's, watching them interact and grow with each other, dreaming about what it would be like to be a part of a family like that, and one night, she gets a chance to know. What happens after that is crazy and wonderful and confusing- it's her life next door.

My Review: Another book that I absolutely adored. If Samantha had attended my school, she's one of those girls who I would've written off as a snob. It's not because she's rude, in fact, she'd incredibly mild tempered. Samantha Reed is, for all intents and purposes, incredibly socially awkward. It's not that she's weird (she's actually quite normal), she just has a hard time relating to people, which is why she was not only an interesting character, but one I could relate to. The same goes for all the Garrett's. Each member of the Garrett family was oddly endearing and it quickly becomes clear why Samantha was so drawn to them. Samantha's mother, Senator Grace Reed, is a different story. I realize that she isn't exactly supposed to be liked, but Fitzpatrick may have gone a little overboard with the bad mother character. Grace has every negative personality trait anyone could possibly dream up for a fictional mother. She's vain, controlling, distant, but worst of all, she has a hard time owning up to her mistakes (this becomes quite important towards the end of the novel). Through all of this, Samantha still manages to come out relatively unscathed by her mothers poor choices, and for this, I am glad. I really enjoyed the romance aspect of this novel, and I am SO glad that Fitzpatrick didn't pull a classic YA romance move (you know, the one where the characters meet, and within 3 days are completely head over heels in "love" with each other?) Overall, this was a pretty good book, the story was convincing enough, and while it was primarily a novel about a romance between Samantha and Jase, Fitzpatrick still managed to cover other topics (addiction, friendships, making difficult decisions) and deal with them in a convincing way.

My Overall Opinion: I would definitely recommend this book to someone else, in fact, I'd gladly read it again, something I usually don't do with books.