A review by katiev
Forever by Allyson Young
1.0
Just not my thing.
For one, I read that the author was a social worker and I can believe that. I worked in IT at a mental health facility for children (mostly teens in state custody) for a few years. Over that time I picked up a quite a bit of the therapy buzz words, treatment strategies, and histories of some of the kids in the system to recognize them.
There was so much psycho-babble regurgitation going on. Talk about boundaries, triggers, taking care of yourself before you take care of others, etc. People in real life don't talk like that. Maybe if they've been in enough therapy it starts to slip into daily conversations, but I didn't get the impression that was the case.
Both the H/h were f'd up and knew it. The h was in a place where she was really trying to make some changes in her life, so I could buy some of her use of jargon. Still, the book was just too filled with it for my tastes. YMMV. It's odd to read about all these damaged people psychoanalyzing themselves as they continue to make bad decisions. In my personal experience most screwed up people don't recognize that they are screwed up, hence all the screwing up. Not to say you can't make a bad decision and recognize it, but dunno... this was just too much. Especially when the hero was supposed to be a crime boss and he was rattling off pearls of wisdom like 'your emotional state is your choice'.
Also, as another reviewer mentioned, there was quite a bit of pretentious language going on that didn't quite fit. Repetition of words, etc does get old, but there's a fine line between that and regurgitating a thesaurus.
This had some moments with potential. When she was kicked out by him and ran away, he tracked her down and basically kidnapped her back. Fun times, I thought. Shades of a good OTT Harley. Then she decides it's best for her mental health to just go along and not leave/be friends the very next day I was banging my head.
For one, I read that the author was a social worker and I can believe that. I worked in IT at a mental health facility for children (mostly teens in state custody) for a few years. Over that time I picked up a quite a bit of the therapy buzz words, treatment strategies, and histories of some of the kids in the system to recognize them.
There was so much psycho-babble regurgitation going on. Talk about boundaries, triggers, taking care of yourself before you take care of others, etc. People in real life don't talk like that. Maybe if they've been in enough therapy it starts to slip into daily conversations, but I didn't get the impression that was the case.
Both the H/h were f'd up and knew it. The h was in a place where she was really trying to make some changes in her life, so I could buy some of her use of jargon. Still, the book was just too filled with it for my tastes. YMMV. It's odd to read about all these damaged people psychoanalyzing themselves as they continue to make bad decisions. In my personal experience most screwed up people don't recognize that they are screwed up, hence all the screwing up. Not to say you can't make a bad decision and recognize it, but dunno... this was just too much. Especially when the hero was supposed to be a crime boss and he was rattling off pearls of wisdom like 'your emotional state is your choice'.
Also, as another reviewer mentioned, there was quite a bit of pretentious language going on that didn't quite fit. Repetition of words, etc does get old, but there's a fine line between that and regurgitating a thesaurus.
This had some moments with potential. When she was kicked out by him and ran away, he tracked her down and basically kidnapped her back. Fun times, I thought. Shades of a good OTT Harley. Then she decides it's best for her mental health to just go along and not leave/be friends the very next day I was banging my head.