Hailey Warren brutally rejected Phil Warner during their first days on campus and sent the young man into a tailspin that lasted months. Now necessity and desire have brought them together. It might last - if they can put aside their anger and distrust long enough to get to know one another.
Size: 3589 KB (702,856 words)
Genre: Romantic
Sex Contents: Some Sex
Tags: Ma/Fa, Fa/Fa, Teenagers, Consensual, Romantic
Review by Quasirandom [other reviews by Quasirandom]
Reviewed:
This is a very good story, but the telling of it is a bit messy. I like coming-of-age stories more than anything (other than possibly sex farce) and this has a lot of what I like about the genre. Phil and Hailey are compelling characters who need to mature in similar, occasionally contrasting ways, and pairing them was inspired.
That said, the plot wobbles more than a bit, with developments arriving sometimes at random or feeling contrived. There are, at both the scene and episode level, repetitions that redundant. The pacing of the last third is slack, with less tension than before and with stakes that don’t matter as much. And lastly, it doesn’t so much conclude as suddenly stop.
(It’s like the first book of a story cut into two volumes for publishing reasons, even though how many pages can be bound together is irrelevant for web serials.)
Phil and Hailey sell it, though. If you like them, this is worth the read.
Fair warning, to help you calibrate this review: It took me four attempts at reading this to finish it, which is surprising—I can think of only one other book I’ve given even three tries. Second chances, sure, but the story managed to draw me back strongly enough to overcome even a third strike. FWIW, the first strike was the rocky opening chapters, where Phil and Hailey change in ways that are only retrospectively and partially supported, while the other two were watching a painful mistake unfold in slow motion, then watching a very similar one start to unfold. I was, finally, able to get past that scene, but it does mean I’ve read that rocky opening four times.
A few other warnings: This is firmly late-period cynical Cantrell, with almost as much soap-boxing pretending to be dialog as “Unforgettable Weeks.” There’s also a lot of crossover cameos, two of them pure fanservice (with “Daze in the Valley” and “Death and a Life in Emerald Cove”) and one so integral that it makes the last fifth of the book essentially a sequel to “A Flawed Diamond.” And finally, the proofreading is unusually bad (mostly dropped words, but also typos) for Cantrell, who’s otherwise always professional-level about this.
