Reviews

In Too Deep by Amanda Grace

somarostam's review

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3.0

I have read one book of Amanda Grace and it was amazingly heart-breaking and real. I loved what I felt through that book and I guess I put too much expectations into this one. It didn't disappoint but it was lacking in many aspects.
Sam is just the average-looking, normal teenage girl. She has a huge crush on her best friend, Nick and she would do anything to get his attention. Even if it means throwing herself at the most popular playboy at school. But her actions have their consequences and Sam might not be able to ever get back to her normal life.
This plot had a lot of potential. There were many aspects that were studied: alchohol use, bullying, rape, and many others. I liked the plot very much but what fell short for me was the charcaters. No matter what I did, I couldn't connect with Sam. Maybe a little on the level of loving her best friend, but otherwise, she was too much a drama queen for me. I felt like she cared too much about what other people thought of her. But Nick is adorable, cute, and smart. He reminds me of someone close to me and I loved him for it. He truely cares about Sam, and God! I was glad there is no love triangle
Do not expect to be happy after reading any of Amanda Grace's books. They are raw and real, and they show you what happens when you walk down the wrong road. Even though I knew this, I did not expect the ending. At all. But I liked it and it teaches you a lesson, indeed. I would recommend this, but will not read it again.

simone_marie's review

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5.0

I think the plot of this book is very unique and interesting. The short few days it takes for Sam and Carter's last days of senior year to take a turn is amazing. I feel this book is realistic and shows how a misunderstanding can change someone for ever and how not doing anything to fix it is even worse. The impact of lies and secrets on a small town is illuminated and brought to light in this book. I recommend for anyone who likes young adult realistic fiction (that's extremely realistic).

mehsi's review

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1.0

Watch out! Spoilers are all over the place.


I was hesistant to read this book. I am not really into books that feature rape. Luckily I found out this book didn't feature rape, just a girl accidentally saying yes to people when asked vaguely about something.

Though, really that girl is an idiot. She could have fixed it days ago, fixed it all, but she just let it all come and grow. :\ I feel for Carter, he didn't do anything (though he is mean and rotten to girls), but no one deserves a rape charge, no one deserves to be accused of such a thing. It will break his whole future, and apparently our lovely lead girl Sam, doesn't give a damn about it or didn't think about it.
I liked Sam in the beginning of the book, though ok, there are better ways to get your best friend to love you, and those don't involve flirting (and potentially having sex) with another dude. Yes that might make him jealous, but also it might make him drop you.
And she should really think about, before saying yes to stuff, I know you are drunk (stupid), but atleast try to focus when people see you step out of a room, all bruised and your top is ripped. But nooo, miss Sam is drunk and totally crushed because Carter just told her she is ugly.

Thank Lord she just told the girls about it, and they are feeling all guilty (good). Though now they are planning just to continue with the whole deal, because, hey, who cares about those rumors when he is off to California in a few days.. and he has had a long time to reign the school as if he is God... People that is not how it works and that is not how you should think. :\

And wow that Dad is like super overprotective, it is just sad and pathetic. Your daughter has everything planned out, and you just rip everything to shreds and don't even listen or hold an adult conversation over her choices? Like what?

Wow, yippee in the end she confesses to everyone that it wasn't true, no one got raped. And that she didn't start the rumor, but that she also didn't do anything to stop it. She is sorry. Well sorry, is a bit too late girl. If you were honest, you would have gotten to keep Nick, now you have no Nick. Now you have nothing.

I wouldn't really recommend this book to anyone. Unless you like a character who is quite dumb and annoying.

pikasqueaks's review

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2.0

Sam is your quintessential teenage nobody – she has one friend, and that friend doesn’t even know about the thing she cares the most about, writing. In a town so small that you’re bound to have two classes with everyone in your entire graduating class, where her father is conveniently the chief of police, it’s no wonder she feels a bit alone.

The story starts with Sam being in love with her best friend. Who hasn’t been there? It’s a feeling so familiar to so many people that you can immediately identify with her. But Sam’s best friend, Nick, is also the class president. He cares deeply for her, and her social status as slightly dingy wallpaper doesn’t bother him. Their friendship is illuminated through wonderful scenes together from the very start—and the reader knows that there’s maybe more than just a possibility that the feelings are mutual.

We move on from there to the bulk of the story – Sam is seen leaving Carter’s bedroom in tears and a total wreck. We know why, but the others don’t. The assumptions start, and partially due to Sam’s state of inebriation, she unknowingly tells one of the bystanders that yes, Carter, golden boy of the town, raped her.

From there, the story branches out into a few directions. Sam doesn’t realize what she’s done until after the weekend is through, and it’s all over school. People befriend her and come up to her who wouldn’t normally before, and her best friend is beside himself over what happened when he finds out. But even when she does find out, Sam doesn’t open her mouth and deny what happened.

This, unfortunately, is where the book loses a lot of credibility with me. Sure, it might be realistic if someone was cruel enough to let something like that get so out of hand. But Sam isn’t written like that – in fact, Sam isn’t written like much at all. She is afraid of everything – her feelings for Nick, her father (who is written so stereotypically as the single father in a position of power), and anyone knowing that she loves writing. That’s all that we know about Sam. By the end of the book, I couldn’t tell if she had really grown, or if she shifted to avoid all the things flying at her.

I have to commend Mandy Hubbard / Amanda Grace for her continuing interesting choice of plot. But I Love Him and In Too Deep had so much potential in them, but like But I Love Him, there was a lot missing in In Too Deep. I don’t think that this is the kind of book that can only be 228 pages. There are so many things that should have been elaborated on, dealt with, and fleshed out.

For example, Sam’s emotions: sorrow swirls through me, I feel my cheeks burn, confusion twists through me, my face flames hotter. The entire book, either something was going through her body, or burning her, but that’s all. You don’t feel the emotions with Sam, you’re told them, which is why this book felt so far away.

You feel the reaction of her school more than you feel her reactions. You know where the other students stand, and how they feel. People support Sam, and then Carter’s friends hate her, shame her, and blame her for what happened. That, of course, is hugely realistic, especially to a high school. As sad as it is, we know that happens. We see it all the time, and Hubbard/Grace did a fantastic job making that feel realistic.

But we reach a point where Sam should have spoken up, and unfortunately, she doesn’t. What happens next is, without a doubt, her fault. After she passes that point without opening her mouth, things slide downhill for her, and for this book altogether.

I enjoyed reading this for the plot, but it may be a while before I pick up anything else by Mandy Hubbard. I like finely developed characters, feeling what they are feeling, and depth. This book had an interesting plot, but that alone was not enough to make up for the lack of everything else.

lazygal's review

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4.0

This is not a book like Good Girl or Speak, although it does have some of those elements.

We're a few weeks before graduation, and Carter - the golden boy, the one every girl wants - is throwing a party; Sam has decided that it's her last, best chance to make Carter notice her and changes from her usual jeans/t-shirt to a thong, stilettos and a micro-mini. It does get his notice, but not in the way she wants... and things only get worse when someone misinterprets what happened between them. Sam, humiliated by Carter's response to her overture, just wants to forget it happened, particularly since things finally seem to be going well with Nick, the boy-next-door.

When school starts on Monday and people are staring at her, then asking how she is, she thinks it's all about what really happened, and then she learns it's because they think he raped her. Now, at this point Sam could have done the decent thing and said "no, he didn't" but she's at first too shocked and then too scared to say anything. When she finally does admit that he didn't, she's with a group of former friends who are all being supportive, and they convince her that Carter has been a real jerk for a long time and that a couple of weeks not being Big Man On Campus would be good for him. Of course, this completely backfires on everyone.

Sam's dilemma was written realistically, and I could relate to her distress and confusion about how to handle everything. I particularly liked that she learned the very hard way that doing the easy thing can have lasting consequences. The reason this wasn't a 5-star review was that there were moments, when there was something just a bit off with her relationship with her father. Unlike the other relationships she has, this one read a bit too stereotypical and mostly for effect.

ARC provided by publisher.

taishacasimir's review

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1.0

In Too Deep seemed like an interesting book by the description. However, by the first chapter, Sam, the main character was already annoying. She was just obnoxious. Sam tried to make her best friend, Nick, jealous by sleeping with the golden boy, Carter. However, that plan backfired. He rejects her. Someone thinks the worst when they see Sam coming out of his room. The next day, everyone in the school already thinks that he raped her, but he didn't. Sam had many times to tell the truth to everyone about what happened at the party and what did not happened. But Sam kept on lying to everyone, including her best friend, Nick, because she didn't want to lose him as her new boyfriend. In the end, she learned her lesson, when she lost everything. I would not recommend this book to anyone. This book was a total let down.

angburla's review

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4.0

http://wp.me/p3NkIQ-28

whathappenedtoagoodbook's review

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1.0

I have to say that I was rather disappointed with this book, I loved Amanda Grace's writing in But I Love Him, but in this book, I found myself wanting to put it down. The main character really got under my skin and some of the actions in the story didn't seem very realistic. The book, in my opinion, was a terrible read with an overly aggravating main character!

purplepages's review

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2.0

Two wrongs don't make a right.

After reading this book I felt a little bad because I didn't like it as much as I did But I love him.



I was extremely disappointed.

Let me just make it clear, I wasn't disappointed because the writing was bad or that the characters were not well developed. It was. I love Amanda Grace and this was why I decided to read this. I was so sure I was going to fall in love with it like But I love Him but I was wrong. I didn't like it as much as I thought I would.

The story starts with Sam deciding to make her best friend Nick jealous by her attempt to flirt with Carter who was like the Golden Boy of their school. Yes, she was in love with her best friend and was too scared to tell him directly. Hence, she made that plan and was expecting it to go smoothly, only it didn't. She made a fool out of herself in front of Carter and she hurt herself as well in the process (not Carter's fault at all) which caused one person to think she was sexually abused.



Funny thing was, Nick already has feelings for Sam as well. Sam was extremely happy and just pretended that what happened with Carter just never happened. Unfortunately, some things can't just be left alone. The rumors that she didn't make spread across the school and Sam didn't do anything to stop it.

Okay. So let's get on with the review.

I am totally enraged with Sam. I actually didn't feel bad about what happened to her at all except maybe towards the end. Majority of the time, I wanted to give her an award for being the most coward and stupidest person I've ever read about.



I am seriously upset about everything that has happened in this book. No its not about the author. I was upset about how true something like this could happen and someone stupid (like Sam) would make the same mistake. This could have been avoided really. She not only wrecked her own life, but she wrecked someone else's life as well.

Carter maybe an a**hole. He may be the douchiest douchebag there is in the entire universe but he didn't deserve to be tagged a rapist when he never really did anything. I can think of a couple of other things to call him but a rapist is definitely not one of them.

Nick. I will say I'm disappointed with him. I don't think he loved Sam as much as he said he did. Aside from Sam, he will have to be my next disappointment. Tsk tsk.

I wanna talk about Sam again. I wanna talk about how much all the decision she seems to make is wrong. Okay that seems to be an over exaggeration but seriously, she thinks like a 5 year old. I agree with her father when she said that she wasn't ready to live life outside home. She really wasn't. She was immature. She was selfish. She was easily swayed by other's opinion (ehem. stupid popular backstabbing people. ehem).

As much as I hated the main character Sam, I don't hate the book all in all. I just didn't really like the things that happened but I think if this happened to anyone, it will have the same outcome. It was realistic.

MAJOR SPOILER HERE

SpoilerSeriously, I knew she had it coming. She knew that in the end, Nick would leave as soon as he finds out what she did which in my opinion wasn't her fault at all. And he did. He did leave her. And the people who pushed her to continue the lie, where were they? Eventually, they'll be gone too.

If she just came clean the first part of the book, all her worries would not have been as big as what it was during the end of the book. She lost the one person who was most important to her.

The boat glides to a stop and I sigh. The night is over, and I'm definitely not Cinderella anymore. My carriage is a pumpkin and my dress has turned into tatters, and the prince knows I'm a peasant. I want nothing more than to find my way home to my warm bed, climb in, and turn off the lights and hope the world outside just goes away.

Too bad pumpkin, you made a mistake that you took too late to correct. You made that decision and you have to live with it.


I guess the good part of a very depressing book like this is the ending. That is where everything falls into place. Where every wrong is made right. In the end, the lesson you learn is really what's important. The things you've done, they are all in the past but the lesson that you learn after making that mistake is what people should be mindful about. They should learn and not do it again. And I think in Sam, learned her lesson.

It's happening, though. A little at a time, I'm finding myself

I'd like to give it more stars but I really couldn't. I just couldn't connect that much with Sam during the whole book except towards the end. I would have to change the two stars to three. As I was writing this review, I realized that it really wasn't all bad. It was good. The lesson was good. The intention of the author to share what would happen is good.

la_feli's review

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1.0

Reseña y premio a La Protagonista Más Tonta

Y, SIN MÁS -NINGUNA- DILACIONES, EL PREMIO A LA PROTAGONISTA MÁS TONTA ES PARA...


SAM M
¡Enhorabuena, te lo has ganado a pulso!

¿Tengo algo más que decir?
Pues sí.

Esto me pasa por escoger los libros al azar, que termino otorgando premios penosos y haciendo todo un espectáculo.

Pero bueno, lo hecho, hecho está.

No os dejéis engañar por la portada, In too deep no es ningún libro dramático sobre personas con problemas, superación o depresión. No toca ninguna fibra y tened por seguro que no tiene nada de deep.

El libro empieza con la típica fiesta organizada por el chico más popular del instituto -mira que les gustan a los estadounidenses estas fiestas-, y en la que Sam, nuestra protagonista, se dispone a ligar con el susodicho chico popular para poner celoso a su mejor amigo, Nick, y así conseguir que la mire como algo más que una amiga.
¿Cliché? Sí.
¿Infantil? Mira tú por donde.
¿Estúpido? Ni falta hace que lo diga.

El caso es, Nick ni siquiera echa cuenta a Sam en toda la fiesta. Ni Nick, ni chico-popular, a.k.a Carter, ni ningún otro chico. Ante un inminente plan fallido, Sam no ve otra cosa que hacer más que emborracharse.
Es así cómo acaba fisgoneando en la habitación de Carter cuando él está dentro, tropezando, rompiense su top, dándose un golpe, siendo cruelmente rechazada por Chico-popular y con todo el instituto creyendo que ha sido violada por éste último.

Lo único que tenías que hacer es darle una indirecta por twitter, chica. No hace falta que te compliques la vida.

Sólo que Sam no sabe de los rumores hasta mitad del día lunes, una semana antes de la graduación.
De repente, se encuentra siendo el objetivo de burlas, miradas poco sutiles y de la compasión de personas que ni siquiera se dignaron a mirarla en todos los años que estudiaron juntos. Además, está la cosa de que todos creen que Carter es un monstruo-violador, cuando es mentira.
Lo de ser un violador, no lo del monstruo.

Vamos a poner las cartas sobre la mesa:
Sam va al instiuto, y se entera de que se rumorea de que fue violada.
Le están haciendo la vida imposible a ella, así que imagínate como será la de Carter, con todos en su contra.
La gente pregunta muchas veces a Sam si lo que dicen por ahí es cierto, y ella, en vez de negarlo, sólo asiente.

Si sólo hubiera negado la cabeza, ¡que no cuesta nada!, sólo moverla de un lado a otro, sólo una vez, podría haberse solucionado todo.
No huevos podridos en el coche de Carter, no pintadas de "perra" en la taquilla de Sam, no compasión, no visitas a la oficina del director, no drama, no problem.

Este libro habría pasado de novela a relato corto de, digamos, 15 páginas como mucho.

Durante todas las páginas del libro, cuando no está autocompadeciéndose, Sam se excusa diciendo que ella no empezó el rumor. Que todos saltaron a conclusiones. Que ella no quiso que nada de esto pasase.
Pero tuvo mil y una oportunidades para solucionar el problema, y no lo hizo.

Ella -tal cual, como si fuera una persona de verdad y no un personaje- dice que sólo seguía con la mentira porque era más fácil que afrontar la verdad -como si decir que no fue violada fuera peor que ser violada de verdad-. Pero yo creo que es mentira.
Creo que, en realidad, le cogió el gustito a ser la víctima.

Por una vez, el chico popular era el malo, y la chica invisible era vista por todos. En aquella semana que duró el conflicto, Sam se vio abordada por muchas personas, amigas con las que se dejó de hablar, chicas populares que querían ayudarla, y prácticamente todo el instituto apoyándola -además de que Nick parece haberse quitado una venda de los ojos-.



Como si el ser acusado de violación fuera un camino de rosas para Carter. Sí, es un capullo. Y sí, se merecía que la gente le viera como tal. Pero nadie merece ser acusado de algo tan cruel cuando es completamente inocente.

Algo que he odiado al leer In too deep, es la facilidad con la que la protagonista lleva ser la "chica violada". Se toma la violación como si fuera algo normal, nada importante. Pasea por los pasillos, come, charla y juega como si nada.
Como si la violación no fuera un acto atroz.
Y sí, sé que en realida no le pasó, pero podría habérselo tomado con más seriedad y haber dicho la verdad, por lo menos por un poco de respeto.

Pues eso era todo lo que tenía que decir. La narración es simple tirando a mediocre. Los personajes, aunque algunos se salen del cliché, son más del tipo de relleno.

Aunque el final no es feliz, y eso sí que me gustó.
Bueno, no tanto.