I've read maybe ten New Adult books and there's only one that I've really liked, Tammara Webber's Easy. Nicole William's Lost and Found and Sabrina Elkins Stir Me Up I liked though I've not reread those, (Easy is a comfort read for me, I've read it at least three times). From the books I've read and the synopsis of the ones I haven't, books in the NA genre are either filled with unbelievable and/or over emotional characters such as Colton and Nell in Jasinda Wilder's Falling Into You, or it's an excuse for the author to market badly written erotica to the NA demographic such as Sarah Tork's Always Wanted. I'd pretty much given up on the NA genre as a whole.And then someone mentioned in the comments of dearauthor.com that Diana Peterfreund wrote the NA book One and Only under the pseudonym Viv Daniels. I've only read one of Peterfreund's books, For Darkness Shows the Stars (a retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion), but I liked it well enough to give her NA book a chance and I'm glad I did. One and Only manages to be an emotional book without feeling manipulative. Tess and Dylan feel like real characters, they make mistakes but the mistakes don't feel like plot devices to move the story along. I would reread this book and I look forward to more NA books by Viv Daniels. So I liked it a lot, but didn't love it. Let me try to explain my thoughts. The author does a fantastic job at getting us to hate her father right away. A genuine hate, not forced, he's a jerk, and you feel awful for her. As I read this I'm seeing this is very real life. This girl is struggling with her self worth because of how and what she experienced growing up. She second guesses everything. This feels very realist. The writing is really good too. The problem was it was just realistic, no real pull or drama. And I'm not an angst whore, that's not what I'm saying. It just sort of fell flat. And I didn't really see the romance part of the book. No real, "I need these two people together" moments. It wasn't a romance but it was a story about a girl growing, and coming to terms with herself, her life, and her parents. The problem again is it just wasn't a story that kept me tied to my iPad. Even though this one didn't grab my heart, I am looking forward to the the next one.
What do You think about One & Only (Canton) (2013)?
Arrrgh! I love hot nerds! This book took me out of my reading slump.
—Samer
