“I’m not naïve. I know I don’t get the happily ever after. My knight in shining armor took the highway detour around this god forsaken shit hole. I’ve made peace with that. That doesn’t mean I’m going to lay down like a doormat and let every cocky prick in the trailer park have his way with me.”
Cass lives a depressing life in a small trailer park in Eddington, GA with her mother and abusive boyfriend Jackson. She works hard to barely make ends meet. One day Tucker White, the leader singer in the band Damaged, walks into her diner. He tries to show her that there is more to life than the hand she has been dealt but being with Tucker will come at a high price.
WARNING! This review contains a pretty big spoiler; check yourself before you wreck yourself...
Well, fishsticks. I think I just expected too much from this book. I saw so many people talking about it on Goodreads, and then it skyrocketed to the top 5 on B&N so I thought surely it would just rock my face off. Sadly, it didn’t. It wasn’t bad, but it just wasn’t that great either.
Cass is stuck living in a trailer park with her mother and her boyfriend, Jackson. When she’s not waiting tables at the local diner to help support all three of them, she’s trying to keep her mother and boyfriend off drugs and attempting to cover the bruises Jackson leaves all over her body. She hates her life. Enter Tucker White; a rock star that wanders into her diner and convinces her that she deserves a better life and he is just the person to give that to her.
The premise is great and I knew there would be plenty of angst, which is why I was so anxious to read this book; the execution, however, falls a little flat. I felt like the characters lacked a lot of development, so it was really hard for me to buy into this whole whirlwind romance. Sure, we know Cass is depressed with her life and Jackson wasn’t always a drug addict that took out his anger on her…but what do we know about Tucker; that he’s a super famous rock star who makes tons of money and didn’t have great parents growing up. Do we know why they weren’t great parents? Nope, we sure don’t. I guess I just wanted a little more background on the characters, especially Tucker.
I’m also not a big fan of the relationships where they are head over heels in love after only a week. I want a good love story, a progression to the big, huge, “I love you and I’m beyond crazy about you and want to spend my life with you” moment. That didn’t exist in this book. I just didn’t really buy the romance between Tucker and Cass, and the main reason why is because I feel like it was really rushed. Oh, and one other thing that just seemed incredibly unrealistic? Tucker’s reaction to Cass being pregnant. He was ecstatic about knocking up a girl that he’s known for a couple weeks? I don’t buy it. I understand he likes her a lot (or loves her, I guess) but having that kind of reaction seemed incredibly unrealistic to me. I was also slightly confused as to how he was able to go out with Cass and not get hounded constantly if he was such a big rock star; or better yet, how Cass didn’t know who he was if she was such a huge fan of his band? I don’t get it.
Cass was really the only character in this story that I truly liked; Tucker was just alright for me. I liked that Cass was trying to make something of herself despite coming from nothing, and battling the constant nagging feeling that maybe she isn’t destined for a better life; maybe this was exactly what her life was supposed to be. She was kind of the saving grace for this book, IMO.
It’s not a bad story, but it’s just not really a good one either. I wanted to like this book so much that I think my expectations were just a little too high. I’m still looking forward to the next book in the series, and hopefully it will delve a little deeper into Tucker’s personality and what his past is all about; maybe then his and Cass’s romance will be more believable to me. Honestly, I think the best word to sum up this book for me, personally, would be “mehhh…”
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