Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Book Review: Until Harry

I was just telling a friend that I really want to renew my subscription to The Bookworm Box but honestly, I have so many books from past boxes I haven't read yet. Lets not add to the crisis, right? So I'm trying. I picked this one up because it looked good so here we go.

Until Harry - L.A. Casey
He was my best friend, my best not-really-big-brother, and my best protector.

He was my best everything.
He was mine.
Coming home is hard for Lane. Hard because Harry, her beloved uncle, has died suddenly, but also because of him. Kale.
Kale Hunt has been her best friend since childhood. But it was never that simple. He was Lane’s reason for leaving home and moving to New York. Seeing him with someone else, in love with someone else, shouldn’t have hurt. But it did. It really, really did. So she upped sticks and left, started a new life and cut herself off from her past.
But now she’s back, and all the feelings are right there. As if she had never left.
Emotions are running high for everyone, and tragedy has a funny way of bringing people together. But is Lane reading the signs right? Are they still just friends, or is there something more?
Let's just sing it together, OK? "Feelings.....nothing more than feeeeeeelings."

That's what this book is going to give you. It has unrequited love, awkwardness of losing your virginity, trauma, death, suppression of feelings, jealousy, rage, more death, making poor choices because of your emotions, etc. Literally every trope you can fit into a romance book and this one covers it. Honestly I might be missing a few but you get the basics.

In this book we have the struggling love story of Lane and Kale. They grow up together, he's three years older, but Lane is in love with him for as long as she can remember. She doesn't act on it because Kale says often that he loves her like a sister, he's practically a member of their family, and she grows up wanting to be loved by him in a different way but also feeling weird about it because he's like a brother to her. As they grow up it only gets worse except you get the glimmers that Kale feels the same way and is struggling with the same issues, but neither of them do anything because they are terrible communicators and are never on the same page at the same time, it seems.

Until Lane's beloved uncle Harry dies and she's forced to return home and deal with all of the issues that she ran away from. With a story line that alternates to present day and Lane's past, the story of how Lane and Kale being in this strained and heartbreaking impasse is told out and we see the highlights on their relationship timeline. Throughout you see the mistakes they are making and you want to shake your fist at them but alas, it's just a book and you'd look weird.

One negative of the book for me was Lane. She's a combination of stubborn, hard-headed, but also incredibly immature. She doesn't listen to what anyone says but is equally angry when they say nothing at all. It's not that I didn't like her but she was just teetering on that brink and I really wish she had stood up for herself sooner than she did because waiting until the last possible second is just terrible.

Positives of the book is going to be the scene she loses her virginity. I'll tell you- my night was definitely not that hot and I was a little jealous of her. The situation around it is screaming red flags but I also would have thrown caution to the wind and went with it. I really liked Kale, he's the good guy who doesn't really know what to do and feels like he's damned if he does but damned if he doesn't. Things get more complicated for him but they kind of clear the fog out of his eyes too and he comes around the bend a lot sooner than Lane. 

I will say, if you are looking for a book chock full of sexy sessions, you're going to be fairly disappointed, there's really only one but it's at least a really good one. If you're looking for a love story as it unfolds, this is definitely for you and I think you will really enjoy it. Overall I'm giving this one a solid 4 stars. I had a hard time putting it down and liked it.

   

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