Book Review: Beside Your Heart by Mary Whitney

Synopsis:

Late one night, Nicki Johnson plays with emotional fire and Googles her high school love, only to find his name splashed across the British gossip columns. Back in his native England, Adam Kincaid is successful and dating a woman from an aristocratic family like his own. With a career in politics, Nicki's no slouch, but she knows Adam is living a world away from her life. Yet there was a time he was no farther than the next locker. Nicki will never forget their year together in high school-the year of her sister's death, the year her mother checked out. Adam helped Nicki through suffocating grief, and she led him through coming of age. But when is a high school crush something more?

~My Recap~

Nicki is entering her junior year of high school, still reeling from a devastating car accident that ended her sister’s life. Nicki has friends who want to help her through everything, but she can’t talk to them about it. The only person who she is comfortable talking to is Adam Kincaid, the gorgeous British guy in her class that is strangely interested in her.

And I’m assuming you can guess the rest from there.

So, I generally enjoyed this book. Generally. I like picking up New Adult books every now and then because they are usually fairly predictable (AKA happy ending) and I can zip through them.

I did spend an inordinate amount of time making this face while reading this book:

Adam is kind of a man whore. Nicki is kind of a slut. There’s really no getting around it. The first half of this book was talking about how they were fooling around with other people, but they had a connection. Ok. So follow the connection and stop fooling around with other people. It was just…not very romantic to me. Maybe that was the point. But seriously after a while, this was sort of my attitude towards the two:

Now, thankfully, MOST of that nonsense stopped after the halfway point. But then everything else kind of disappeared and the book became SEX. Certainly there was some good development with Nicki’s angst about the accident and all of Adam’s issues with having to return to England. But the rest of the time was like, oh hey, we’re having sex. Again.

And lets just say some of these descriptions were AWKWARD. Like, I’ve read some REALLY graphic romance novels, and there were just things that Whitney harped on that I have NEVER read before. Like, I didn’t even really know what she was talking about. I mean, I kind of picked up on the gist, but I was confused. For reals.

I guess I’m just not cut out for the world of reading awkward sexual encounters.

Man, I’m making it sound like this book was straight sex, which it wasn’t. There was plenty of teen drama. I guess what I disliked most about it was a lot of the romance and or sex wasn’t very romantic. Which I get is real life sometimes, but if I’m spending time reading about it, I want it to be dang romantic. Is that too much to ask?

There were lots of cute Adam and Nicki scenes, don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed their relationship. But I can honestly say that I liked them a whole lot more in the sequel (which I’m reviewing next Monday for the blog tour). Unfortunately, their less than reputable activities (the whorish bit, not the sex bit) continues in the sequel at a new level.

So if you’re a big fan of the New Adult genre, this is a read you’ll probably enjoy. Again, I enjoyed it most of the time.