Review of Down London Road by Samantha Young

Marching right along with my "catch up" reviews, we have another contemporary that I read in May (lots of contemporaries coming up--hunker down, kids).

I'll admit that Samantha Young's On Dublin Street series has taken me a bit by surprise. The way that the first book looked, the descriptions, and most of the reviews (both positive and negative), had me kind of convinced that it wasn't for me. And yet in the case of the first book and Down London Road, I was at least occupied if not fully entertained by the story. It's just engaging enough that it keeps you reading, though something keeps it from being elevated to my "favorite romance of all time" list.

Jo is a bartender who lives with her alcoholic mother and teenaged little brother, whom she protects at all cost. Her highest ambition in life is to marry a rich man, mostly for her brother's sake. She suffers from your text book self esteem issues--figures she pretty enough to land rich boyfriends, but not smart enough to do anything meaningful. But then along comes Cameron, and he's sexy as hell and very intriguing...but he's kind of between jobs, and ends up working at the same bar as Jo. In short, he's not at all her target guy. He's just irresistible enough to have Jo lowering, or perhaps raising her standards.

I'll say right off the bat that Jo is an annoying hypocrite at times. The book desperately wants to show us that she's not shallow, and at times I can believe that. She loves her brother, she works hard, she has all sorts of hidden talents. But when it comes to gifts and help and money, she's totally incapable of thinking logically. She's fine accepting expensive presents from the boyfriends that she dates because they're rich. She's fine with the idea of letting them support her, should one ever purpose. To her credit, she tries to put her heart into her relationships and does develop real feelings for these guys, but the term "gold digger" still applies. She's fine exchanging affection for money, but when her friends offer to help her financially, or even just to get her a better job, all of the sudden she's too proud to accept help. That's messed up. The author means us to think this of course, but I think Jo is more frustrating of a character than the author intended her to be. Like Jocelyn in the first book, Jo's emotional baggage is so obvious and so telegraphed that it actually becomes absurd. Instead of making her more three dimensional, it just serves to remind the reader that she's entirely fictional, and not very likeable to boot.

I actually did like Cameron. I felt he seemed like the typical guy, not overly perfect as men in contemporary romances can sometimes be. The moments when he was kind of a jerk to Jo? Well, I was kind of on his side, honestly. She's the kind of person that begs to be judged, and he makes up to it with hotness and a reasonable level of reliability. I like that he's unflinchingly honest, even if it means being a dick. Sometimes dicks are necessary.

I'm a little hazy on the plot details since I read this in May, and my notes are sparse and I can't recall there being a plot for the most part. Much of the internal drama centers around Jo's above mentioned insecurities, which thankfully become easier to ignore as the story progresses. The external plot is that Jo's parents are awful people, but she has Cameron and the two of them can fuck like bunnies. Jo has to deal with the fact that her mother is an apparently irredeemable alcoholic and her father is absent until he's needed as the villain of the climax of the story. She deals with that by learning to lean on Cameron, have monkey sex with Cameron, and believe in herself. The usual.

Overall this book was very readable, but probably forgettable long term. I like certain aspects of the characters but got a bit frustrated that the author used all the most obvious traits and the laziest path of character development for Jo. 3.5 stars.

Review of On Dublin Street by Samantha Young

This is another one that was recommended so frequently and from so many different sources that I felt obligated to just try it, already. It's funny, though, that after all of the reviews and summaries I read, I still had an entirely incorrect idea of what this book is about. I thought it was erotica. Like, really kinky, hard core erotica. Or maybe like, 50 shades style wannabe porn. I don't know why. But it's not that. It's just romance with somewhat explicit sex scenes and that's about it.

Jocelyn moves to a new, fancy apartment with a new roommate, Ellie. Ellie's older brother Braden is very sexy, and kind of wants to be sex buddies with Jocelyn. Joss lost her family in a car accident when she was a kid, and her best friend died not long thereafter, leaving her psychologically damaged. Jocelyn is very, very bad at letting people in, and she has panic attacks. The book is mostly about Joss working through her issues and learning to accept the friends and love that she's found.

To this book's credit, it does try very hard to draw you in to Joss's screwed up little head, and make you understand and sympathize with her emotional issues and intimacy issues and so forth, and at times it's quite successful. If you've ever had a panic attack, you know how helpless and terrible the experience is. I could totally buy those episodes and the fact that they're triggered by being around Ellie's family. I could even buy her not wanting to let Braden in, beyond their sexual relationship.

I guess my issue with Jocelyn is that her internal demons are laid out in such an overt manner. No subtly. No surprises. Just "I have abandonment issues and panic attacks because my family died all at once and it was horrible." Real people tend to be more complicated. Real emotional baggage takes more time to unravel than that, because deep emotional scars cannot usually be traced back to one or two concrete events. The big events are part of it, yes, but there are hundreds of tiny little things that also build into the screwed up mind. Joss is written as a text book psychology patient instead of as a real person. She never surprised me. She never made me think about her, or the story, from any angle that wasn't entirely predictable. Every time I started to relate to her, she'd disappoint me with her predictable meltdowns and her inability to connect with people.

As far as the romance goes, I admit that it's well written. For the most part. Joss and Braden have great chemistry, both emotionally and sexually. Like Joss, Braden has emotional scars that he might as well where on a t-shirt.

Actually, let's all do that. Joss could have one that says "My best friend died, and I never want to make real friends again." Braden's will say, "My wife cheated on me, and now I only sleep with floozies." Maybe yours will say, "My Daddy left me and now I seek out unhealthy relationships with men." or "I was bullied as a kid, and now I'm mean to people." or "I was attacked by clowns and now I fear clowns and those bendy balloons that look like condoms and make that awful squeaky noise when the clowns make funny shapes with them."

Sorry, I kind of got off track there.

Anyway, yes, the sex is hot and there's sexy dialogue, and the hero is this super alpha/protective/scary/rich/sex god. Braden's extreme sexiness is, if I'm being honest, the best part of the book. A lot of reviews focus on his extreme sexiness, and I think that's why I had it in my head that this was going to be erotica. But it's not. But it is sexy. Braden is appealing, not only for the obvious reasons stated above, but also due to the fact that he's such a loving brother and considerate boyfriend. The fact that he stays with Joss despite all of her bullshit is ill-advised, but nice. I liked Braden quite a bit.

So, I guess to wrap this review up...It's a very readable book, although aspects of it are certainly frustrating and boring. It's a sexy contemporary romance that will appeal to readers who like New Adult (though it's not NA, strictly speaking), and erotica (though it's not that either). Worth trying, but not my favorite. 3.5 stars.

Misc Monday: Updates, Schedules, and Squishy Things

My month of random unorganized reading marches on, and I've got a lot of reviews that I need to complete and publish. Lo and behold, a posting schedule.

4/23--Review of Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

4/24--Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Pt. 3

4/26--Review of On Dublin Street by Samantha Young

4/27--Review of Beyond Shame by Kit Rocha

4/28--Review of Family Man by Heidi Cullinan and Marie Sexton

4/29--Misc. Monday (Topic TBA)

4/30--Review of The Darkest Seduction by Gena Showalter

5/1--Watch This Wednesday (Topic TBA)

5/3--Review of Tidal by Emily Snow

Those of you who are friends with me on Goodreads know that I'm currently reading Rogue Rider by Larissa Ione, and that it's taking me a million years to finish. I actually hit the 50% mark last night, though, so I can confirm that I will be reviewing it at some point coming up, even if it turns into a DNF review (I hope not). I'm also reading Something About You by Julie James, and it's not half bad so far. I'm going to try to get through that one fairly quickly, so that I can start The Elite by Kiera Cass, which comes out tomorrow. You'll more than likely see a review of those three books up in early May as well.

A couple of other notes: I'm doing some housekeeping on this blog. You'll already have noticed the change in theme, which of course I like to change periodically to keep things fresh. I'll also be updating my gadgets, lists, and review policy--everything. Invariably, when I do this, something always ends up a little screwy and I don't always catch glitches and mistakes right away, so if you notice something is off, please let me know,  preferably via email ( readingpenguinATgmailDOTcom ).

One of the things I decided to change was the commenting system-- I went ahead and disabled anonymous commenting. This means that you will now have to be signed in, in one form or another, in order to comment. The reason for this change is the rampant appearance of spam comments I've been getting, sometimes 4 or 5 over the course of a couple hours on a single post, and having to go through and remove all of them is driving me just a little bonkers. Hopefully commenting continues to work for all honest users.

That's really all for now--I'm sorry not to have a more amusing Misc. Monday post for you, but I felt it was important to spend some time on organizing and actually writing all of these reviews instead. Have a great Monday, and as always, Happy Reading!