Reviewer: Rowena Falling for the Wrong Guy by Sara Hantz
Publication Date: October 12, 2015
Genres: Young Adult
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Ruby Davis has a crush on her brother’s best friend. At least, he was his bestie until the big betrayal. Now Drew is off limits to everyone, especially Ruby. She can’t stand the way people treat him, or the way he feels about himself. It isn’t right. And those deep green eyes are calling to her.
Drew is scarred and damaged, and he has no business even looking at Ruby. But he can’t help himself. She’s beautiful, but he does his best to stay away. When they are assigned a school project, they become reluctant friends – even though they want so much more.
She’s torn between her feelings for Drew and loyalty to her brother. There’s no way they can ever be together...but love just might find a way.
Rowena’s review of Falling for the Wrong Guy by Sara Hantz.
One of my favorite tropes is the falling in love with your older brother’s best friend one. This is one of those stories so I was hyped up to get this book read. I also enjoyed the last Entangled: Crush book that I read (I loved it a lot) so I was expecting a lot of the same kind of thing from that book.
Hmm, this book was a completely different reading experience for me.
So Mia (Umm, who the heck is Ruby? The main character in my eARC is Mia, not Ruby) has a huge crush on her brother’s ex-bestfriend, Drew. Drew is the enemy because when Blake (Mia’s brother) found out his girlfriend died, he found out that she was with Drew before she died. Reese (the girlfriend) died in a house fire and Drew, who survived the fire is left with third degree burns on his body.
The book starts and it’s about a year after the fire and Drew is back at school. He missed almost all of school last year so he has to repeat his junior year, which puts him in the same grade as Mia (sorry but she’s Mia to me, not Ruby). The whispers and the stares follow Drew around when he first gets back at school and Mia wants to help him feel welcome because the crush she had on him for all those years hasn’t gone away and though she feels bad about betraying her brother, her heart wants Drew and when they get close after being put together in a group project, Mia has to decide if she wants to continue being Drew’s secret.
Drew refuses to hurt Blake again. The thing with Reese wasn’t planned but Drew carries around a lot of guilt and while he misses his best friend Blake, he understands why Blake hates him so much. So when him and Mia become more than friends, Drew is torn because he wants to be with Mia but he also understands why Blake wouldn’t want him with her. So he makes bonehead mistakes and in his effort to save Blake from being hurt, he hurts Mia and a whole lot of dumbass-ness happens.
Through a lot of the book, I’m annoyed with a different person. First it was Blake and his anger that was directed at all of the wrong things and people. Then it was Mia and then it was Drew and then it was Mia and Blake’s father and then it was back to Mia and then back to Drew. I didn’t understand a lot of what drove the characters to make such dumbass choices and to think the way that they did. I couldn’t connect with anyone except the one person that we didn’t get nearly enough page time with and that was Tiffany, Mia’s best friend. I thought she had a good head on her shoulders and showed a lot of patience and support to Mia. She was a good friend to Mia. She was there when Mia needed her and counseled Mia when she needed to be counseled.
The romance between Drew and Mia had potential to be good, but they got on my nerves throughout a whole lot of the book and by the end, I was just happy to finally be done with them. They drove me crazy. I didn’t understand them, I didn’t sympathize with them and that’s saying something because Drew has third degree burns but the way that he pulled away from everyone and was hot and cold with Mia’s feelings made him a less desirable love interest for me. Mia wasn’t any better. She drove me mad with everything and don’t even get me started on Blake. I didn’t understand his animosity over …everything. He made me mad and then after all was said and done, the resolution to everything came about so freaking fast. Too fast. Too easy.
So while I really liked Tiffany, everything else left a lot to be desired.