Reviewer: Rowena The Fifteenth Minute (The Ivy Years, #5) by Sarina Bowen
Series: The Ivy Years #5
Also in this series: The Year We Hid Away , Blonde Date , The Year We Fell Down , The Understatement of the Year (The Ivy Years, #3), The Shameless Hour (The Ivy Years, #4), The Fifteenth Minute (The Ivy Years, #5), The Year We Hid Away (The Ivy Years, #2), Extra Credit
Publication Date: October 13th 2015
Point-of-View: First
Genres: New Adult
Add It: Goodreads
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Series Rating:
Just because she's famous doesn't mean she's happy. Freshman Lianne Challice is known to millions of fans as Princess Vindi. But sometimes a silver screen sorceress just wants to hang up her wand, tell her manager to shove it, and become a normal college student. Too bad that’s harder than it looks. She’s never lived a normal life. She hasn’t been to school since kindergarten. And getting close to anyone is just too risky — the last boy she kissed sold the story to a British tabloid. But she can’t resist trying to get close to Daniel "DJ" Trevi, the hot, broody guy who spins tunes for hockey games in the arena.
Something's haunting his dark eyes, and she needs to know more. DJ's genius is for expressing the mood of the crowd with a ten second song snippet. With just a click and a fade, he can spread hope, pathos or elation among six thousand screaming fans. Too bad his college career is about to experience the same quick fade-out as one of his songs. He can't get close to Lianne, and he can't tell her why. And the fact that she seems to like him at all? Incredible.
I’ve been looking forward to this book since I finished Bella and Rafe’s book earlier this year. I adored Lianne and was looking forward to seeing her get her guy in this book. When we first met her, she was this shy young woman who wanted to find herself and not be the Sorceress that she’s been since she was a kid. She’s an actress who wanted to go to college and she made that happen.
Her freshman year was spent in her dorm room, playing computer games and not being social. All of that changes when she becomes friends with Bella. Bella is a social person who has loads of friends, friends on the college Men’s hockey team. Bella hangs with her hockey buds at a pizza joint near campus and that is where Lianne meets Daniel “DJ” Trevi.
Lianne is immediately smitten with DJ. DJ is the DJ for the college hockey games. He’s the one that is playing all of the music during the game and Lianne finds out that there’s an art to playing the right song at the right moment during a game. The more she learns about DJ, the bigger her crush on him gets. But the closer she tries to get to him, the more he pushes her away and it confuses the hell out of Lianne because she knows that he’s into whatever is happening between them but he blows hot and cold. One minute, he’s kissing her face off and the next, he’s standing her up. She knows that something is going on with him but she can’t figure out why.
And the reason he blows hot and cold is one whopper of a story. Sarina Bowen really nails these real life situations story lines. Every single book in this series has tackled some real life situation and has made me sit back and think on how I would react in those same situations. She’s opened my eyes to so many things and has made me question myself and I think she writes these stories extremely well.
DJ is on the brink of being expelled from school for something he didn’t do. He’s accused of something pretty terrible and throughout this book, we see the toll that this accusation takes on his life. From school to work to friends, DJ is one giant ball of stress. The one thing in his life that brings him any kind of joy is spending time with Lianne but even that is tainted with his case. His father has hired lawyers to help with his case but they haven’t really gotten anywhere and DJ isn’t very hopeful for this new lawyer that wants to take a stab at proving his innocence.
Holy cow, this book hit me in the feels and I really came to love both DJ and Lianne. I mean, I already loved Lianne from the previous book but DJ, holy cow I loved DJ. They were so great together and I loved seeing the small moments that led to them falling for each other. From their time reading Shakespeare to their time in the DJ booth at the hockey games to Lianne’s trip to meet DJ’s family, this was one heck of a romance.
It’s a romance that will have you cheering, crying and laughing throughout the entire thing. It’s a romance that will hit you where it hurts but hug you close to make it all better. It’s a romance that I definitely recommend.
Grade: 4.25 out of 5
The Ivy Years
*nods nods*
I agree! I mean, Sarina tackles difficult topics in all of this and she had already wow-ed me with her handling of consent in The Blonde Date and I didn’t think she could top it off but she did in this story.
I have mad respect for how she handled it, and that we got to see why DJ was accused and that it was believable that it would happen.
Other than that, I really loved Lianne and how she was trying to be more assertive with her own life and choices, and that in her own way she was pretty willing to put in the good fight to get close to DJ. 😀