Hey Bookworms!
I am a sucker for college sports romances, and on top of that, I love Isla Madden-Mills work. I’ve read five of her books so far, and I’ll probably be starting another soon. I read this book in two days, staying up until midnight reading.
Rating: 🌟Five beautiful, big stars. 🌟
Synopsis: River is a football god on campus, Anastasia is a queen of nothing and sweet as pie. River pretends she doesn’t exist, and Anastasia works to forget she’s drawn to River. Her world comes crumbling down around her in a moment, and he’s there to help pick up the pieces with a revenge pact.
My thoughts:
The Characters: We’ll start with River, our main man. To be quite honest, I couldn’t stand him in the first chapter. He crawls out of bed, having a grumpfest over his football season not going as planned, eventually gets in his truck and goes to campus with a thought about not thinking about her.
River actually grew on me quite a bit, and I freakin’ swoon over him now. I see why he didn’t want to think about Anastasia, our leading lady, because he was the instigator to the relationship she had with his fraternity brother instead of him.
River is actually a very caring guy and goes out of his way to take care of those closest to him. As president of Kappa, he came up with fun fundraisers and new ideas to harp on the pledges instead of the typical routines that most frats fall into. River also takes extra thought when it comes to his family and would give up anything to help his family including the degree he has slaved over, fighting his learning disabilities.
River tries to put his feelings for Ana aside when she’s in a time of need, and ends up staying out all night to comfort her after the wildly dramatic breakup she goes through, which just goes to show how caring and kind he can be.
Anastasia, the leading lady, is different, and she likes being different. I think what I liked most about Anastasia was that she wasn’t just titled different and written as every other heroine in romance novels is where the only thing different is that they wear glasses. No. Anastasia dyes her hair lavender, she takes the time to make friends with the transient living behind her apartment complex. She makes friends with Crazy Carl at the bar.
Her upbringing itself was different. Anastasia never went to a normal school, she was taught by scholars, physicists, artists, musicians. Her parents were gypsies and always on the move. They’d leave her in the care of people they thought were trustworthy and teachers. Anastasia ended up loving one of the people she was entrusted to and grew up faster than she should have by falling for someone who was in his thirties and married when she was just seventeen.
Anastasia is quick to love, which plays into the struggle in the story. She is wildly smart and plans on going to Harvard with Donovan….until that falls apart. I think she is fairly well rounded as a character in general without having a Mary Sue quality. You feel her raw emotions, she lashes out at River because he’s there. Then, you feel her guilt at lashing out and her sadness over the things that get her down. Ana has fears over people leaving her because of her upbringing. She was basically left over and over again by her parents and then by Bryson, her older love. She is effectively left behind once more with Donovan. Due to all of this, she fears River will leave her too.
My favorite thing about Isla Madden-Mills is that her secondary characters have depth to them. While Donovan isn’t a total secondary character, he’s a villain in my head…that’s a little harsh though, he is fairly well developed. I strongly disliked him from the start, but he is a product of his upbringing. Donovan was from an affluent family with political ties, and he was raised as such. He was raised to value public image and keeping his ducks in a row and everything needed to be tidy.
He had broken up with Harper, his picture perfect hometown girlfriend, and he dated Anastasia. He was probably drawn to her because she was different, but he ultimately left her because she was different. Donovan is easily swayed by his parents, and they convince him that it’s time to leave Anastasia after they dig into her history. Their breakup was messy, dramatic, and public, but it was the catalyst that caused Anastasia to wake up and see River.
Lila and Colette were somewhat developed, but they were also kind of forgettable. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Lila’s quirky commentary, especially when she was high on marijuana. That whole scene with them smoking and thinking they were hallucinating seeing River was hysterical and had me rolling. However, I think Colette was kind of forgotten. Lila was a hoot with her revenge pact idea and the whole Legally Lavender idea.
June I loved the inclusion of June. I think that she really helped to show not just Anastasia’s caring and nurturing side, but also helped to develop River’s sweet gooey center. He drove around in the middle of the night to find June when Anastasia couldn’t find her. He couldn’t bear the thought of her being out there hurt and then solved the problem of her not having a place to stay anymore. I loved that June had a backstory and was not simply a transient that Anastasia cared for. The tie in with her son dying in a fire and then June losing her place to stay because the boiler had exploded was nice attention to detail on the author’s part.
Crazy Carl was an interesting character, literally. The man believes in aliens and that there are other life forms. Maybe. Maybe not. He is the second mastermind behind getting River and Anastasia together and ties up nicely with a neat bow in solving June’s living problem by allowing her to live in his RV.
Last. Benji. I freakin’ love Benji. He’s such an oddball with his love of his deceased pet bird only to have River buy a bearded dragon for him. He is so sweet to Anastasia and also a great little brother to River. He speaks his mind, but he’s still easily distracted by girls. Literally, just give me a whole book about Benji, kthxbye.
The Plot: I don’t really have any qualms about the plot. I feel like the build up to the breakup of Donovan and Anastasia took a little too long, but it did build anticipation for Anastasia finally realizing that River is actually her perfect man.
The moments of tension between Anastasia and River were perfectly spaced and so spicy. His pushing her buttons on the elevator with the phone call from his niece and then his fake phone call to his niece. The forcing of them to sit next to each other in class, I can literally see them pushed up against the opposite sides of their chairs.
Then, River begrudgingly eating her lasagna and taking the pan and her book back to her. Yes. Him walking in on her high while celebrating her birthday, also fabulous. That whole scene was hysterical. Anastasia casually feeling his face, determined that her head has conjured him up. The fact that she thinks she’s conjured him up just shows that he’s really who her brain wants.
The breakup. Oh god. I can just feel the secondhand embarrassment from them. I could totally see this happening at a frat party too. Forget the mic is on, and next thing you know, you’ve broadcasted your break up to the whole party. So cringey. But we’ve got River there to save the day.
What I also liked about the plot was that it didn’t wrap up immediately after the two got together. They still had open conflicts to resolve, and they did. The issue of where was Anastasia going to go to law school…was she going to go? What was River going to do the next semester? What was going to happen with Carl and June, River’s mom, Lila and Colette?
Until next time, and I’ll see you guys after the next chapter!
Hey Bookworms Editing 