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A review by taisie22
Altered by Kelly Cain
3.0
I was given a copy of this book by the publisher on Netgalley for an honest review. I wanted to like this book but found that I was just struggling to get through it. It's not the fault of the male lead. Nicolas is a sweet 18-year-old genius who has graduated college and is now in law school. One of his classmates, Olivia or Liv, asks him to join their study group. While he's more of a loner because of his circumstances, he agrees because he's attracted to Liv.
Olivia is coming off a broken engagement. On a positive note, she studies hard in school. In almost every other respect she is completely unlikeable. The circumstances of her engagement (she found out after she had been dating the guy that he was engaged to someone else She makes him break it off and gets engaged to him herself to find out that he has been cheating on her all along - duh) are ridiculous. The way she treats Nicolas is demeaning because as she says every other page, he's only eighteen and five years younger than her. She seems oblivious to the fact that she acts like a fifteen-year-old high school student herself. I was hoping that I'd see some growth from her as the book moved along, but not really. She continues to be controlling and immature right to the end.
The plot is slow, a lot of cooking and traveling, but because it's all from Liv's POV it tends to be centered around her and her feelings about it (because she's the best cook - 'Nicolas, eat crawfish' and has traveled on the California coast more than Nicolas). I don't want to give away the back drama around Nicolas, but it was fairly predictable yet written in an overly-dramatic manner. Liv's petulance at not knowing it all 'right now' was also annoying and immature.
It's too bad because I like stories where the hero is a bit nerdy, but this one just wasn't my cup of tea.
Olivia is coming off a broken engagement. On a positive note, she studies hard in school. In almost every other respect she is completely unlikeable. The circumstances of her engagement (she found out after she had been dating the guy that he was engaged to someone else She makes him break it off and gets engaged to him herself to find out that he has been cheating on her all along - duh) are ridiculous. The way she treats Nicolas is demeaning because as she says every other page, he's only eighteen and five years younger than her. She seems oblivious to the fact that she acts like a fifteen-year-old high school student herself. I was hoping that I'd see some growth from her as the book moved along, but not really. She continues to be controlling and immature right to the end.
The plot is slow, a lot of cooking and traveling, but because it's all from Liv's POV it tends to be centered around her and her feelings about it (because she's the best cook - 'Nicolas, eat crawfish' and has traveled on the California coast more than Nicolas). I don't want to give away the back drama around Nicolas, but it was fairly predictable yet written in an overly-dramatic manner. Liv's petulance at not knowing it all 'right now' was also annoying and immature.
It's too bad because I like stories where the hero is a bit nerdy, but this one just wasn't my cup of tea.