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REVIEW: The Love Interest

Posted on June 11, 2017June 11, 2017 by Windie @ dip into books

Book Review: The Love Interest
	Book title	The Love Interest
	Series/standalone	standalone
	Author	Cale Dietrich
	Pages	384
	Year published	2017
	Category \| Genre	Young Adult \| Sci-fi \| Contemporary
	Rating

Official Summary

There is a secret organization that cultivates teenage spies. The agents are called Love Interests because getting close to people destined for great power means getting valuable secrets.

Caden is a Nice: the boy next door, sculpted to physical perfection. Dylan is a Bad: the brooding, dark-souled guy who is dangerously handsome. The girl they are competing for is important to the organization, and each boy will pursue her. Will she choose the Nice or the Bad?

Both Caden and Dylan are living in the outside world for the first time. They are well-trained and at the top of their games. They have to be—whoever the girl doesn’t choose will die.

What the boys don’t expect are feelings that are outside of their training. Feelings that could kill them both.

Review

In A Nutshell

A book aiming to subvert tropes in YA fiction, but eventually suffers from lack of worldbuilding and poor execution.

Highlights

Let’s start with the positives. This book aimed to subvert YA tropes, specifically the love triangle trope. In that regards, I’d say that Dietrich largely succeeded. Even though I never felt the potential of a love triangle brewing at any point in the book, it’s refreshing to see a protagonist who didn’t ultimately fall in love with their chosen one.
The blurb. The premise. The concept. The marketing of the book. The Love Interest has this great concept, that behind every great person, there is a spy reporting their every move to a secret organization. I really liked the concept and it’s actually could be made believable. It was, I believe, what made most people read The Love Interest. Well, that and the promise of gay romance.

Things I Wish Were Different

Plot holes and poor worldbuilding. The Love Interest was supposed to be a blend between contemporary and SFF. Unfortunately, as science fiction, it failed to deliver due to inconsistency, unexplained plot holes, and convenient timings of things to cover those holes. I could go on and on listing things, but I’d just give some examples to avoid giving out major spoilers.
One, there was a teenager building dangerous weapons (I’m talking about Avengers-grade weapons, here) in her shed at home, and no one – authority or bad guys – was getting concerned?! At no point in the book, Juliet’s inventions were shown to be kept top secret – she talked freely to Caden about them – yet no one attempted to recruit or kidnap or end her? I found that hard to believe.
Two. Kaylee was supposedly monitoring Caden’s every move. However, she was conveniently ‘not listening’ at crucial moments. Also, the implant, there were problems with that too.
Those were just a few things I noticed. Overall, the tech was also not explained very well in term of how they work, which is a let down for me.
Awkward dialogues and lack of chemistry. When it comes to romance in SFF books, I have mixed feelings. I am okay with them most of the time, as long as they’re not taking over the story and turned the protagonist into a blabbering mess around their love interest. The dialogue in The Love Interest, though, brings awkward to another level. And it’s not just the interaction between Caden-Dylan or Caden-Juliet either, it’s the whole thing, the whole book. This book is Dietrich’s debut and it certainly feels like one. I do think his writing has potential so here’s hoping for better written dialogue in the future.
Speaking of chemistry, there was just nothing between Caden-Juliet or Dylan-Juliet that showed us that they have something special so it’s truly surprising to me that Juliet bought it. But then again, this book is a satire, so maybe that is intentional?

Final Score

2.5 stars (out of 5 stars)

Verdict

The Love Interest was an attempt to subvert tropes, and as such Dietrich’s effort is appreciated. Ultimately, however, it was a disappointment due to plot inconsistency, plot holes, thin worldbuilding, and awkward dialogues.

RELEASE DAY – The Love Interest (Cale Dietrich)

Synopsis:

There is a secret organization that cultivates teenage spies. The agents are called Love Interests because getting close to people destined for great power means getting valuable secrets.

Caden is a Nice: The boy next door, sculpted to physical perfection. Dylan is a Bad: The brooding, dark-souled guy, and dangerously handsome. The girl they are competing for is important to the organization, and each boy will pursue her. Will she choose a Nice or the Bad?

Both Caden and Dylan are living in the outside world for the first time. They are well-trained and at the top of their games. They have to be – whoever the girl doesn’t choose will die.

What the boys don’t expect are feelings that are outside of their training. Feelings that could kill them both.

GOODREADS | AMAZON | AUTHOR WEBSITE

Review: Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn

Posted on February 20, 2016 by Windie @ dip into books

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Book Review: Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn
	Book title	Charm & Strange
	Series	No
	Author	Stephanie Kuehn
	Pages	216
	Year published	2013
	Category \| Genre	Young Adult \| Contemporary, Mental Health
	Rating

I somehow feel that I have to start this review by admitting that this is my third attempt on reviewing Charm & Strange. What is it about this book that make it so hard to review?

There are a couple of things, mainly:

the way it was structured. Kuehn told her story from 1st person point of view but from two different timeline: his current life and flashbacks of him as a kid. Both timelines build up to the climax—which is too spoilery to mention here
the best parts of it are the parts I cannot mention without spoiling you of the story itself.

With those challenges in mind, I decided to go back to free-form rather than forcing myself to write a structured review I cannot get through with. This will also be very short review.

Charm & Strange started like a psychological mystery. The MC was standing near the woods staring at the new girl in school, there was a person found dead near that place, and then one of their friends was missing. Charm & Strange is indeed a mystery story (among others), but it might not be the mystery you thought it was at the first glance.

The book told the story of a boy, Win and his past self, Drew. Win was a very clever student, a star athlete, and according to himself not a very nice person. He also believes he’s a monster. Throughout the book, Kuehn weaved us these interconnected stories on what happened to him during his Drew time that he became Win.

Reading Charm & Strange is like watching dreadful events unfolding, knowing it’ll tear your heart, but you just cannot look away. It was a strange book for sure, but it was also awfully compelling, I found myself reading this book while standing in the bus, one hand on the grab handle, one hand flipping the pages on my phone. One just had to know.

The relationships between people in this book are what made Charm & Strange for me. Both the bad and the good ones. I liked that in this book, even though Win was struggling to cope with his reality and the monster he believe he was, he still made time to try to be kind and helpful. I liked that Kuehn made him resilient even though he believed he was weak. Kuehn didn’t make her characters black and white and I appreciate C&S more because of this. It’s not to say that there aren’t characters you want to punch in the face though.

One thing I read about Stephanie Kuehn is that she tried to avoid the trope that romantic affection can transcend emotional pain. Reading Charm & Strange, you could tell she uphold her principle. There’s very little romance in this book and what romance there is never became the main focus of the story.

If there’s one thing I found a little annoying—and most likely it’s the case of it’s not you it’s me—is that at times, I found it a little too dramatic. It didn’t grandiose mental illness or anything of that sort, but there are times when I felt the author low-key waving her hands at me ‘LOOK HERE, THIS IS GOING TO SURPRISE YOU.’

I didn’t include a summary in this review because I’ve only just now read it while writing this review and it surprised me how spoilery it was. The best way to read Charm & Strange in my opinion is to go jump straight into the book without reading any synopsis or even review. However if you’d like to read a summary, you could go to the goodreads page here.

I personally prefer Stephanie’s description of the book:

“It’s the story of a boy who believes that he is a monster. And it’s about understanding why.”

Final score

4 stars (out of 5 stars)

Let me know, have you read Charm & Strange or do you plan to read it? If you have read it, what do you think about the book? Feel free to agree and disagree with my thoughts about it.

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