Just Friends (Friends #1)

This is a hard series for me to rate or review. One one hand, I really enjoyed reading this book and the prequel and I sped through them at record speed. On the other hand, they don\’t really have many of the qualities that I admire in a good book. In fact, there are hardly any despite the fact that I enjoyed reading them so much. I think that I would lump this series in the \”guilty pleasure\” category. This book is pretty much devoid of plot aside from the romantic lives of the characters. It drives the entire story. Not much else happens throughout the book. And the majority of it is just teenagers hooking up, having sex, and betraying one another in love triangles and squares. It sounds juvenile, and perhaps it is, but I will say that it was compelling and entertaining. This story is about drama to the max. The different character types definitely made the story interesting, though I thought that some of them could have used way more character development. For instance, Emily was the most drama-filled character in the book. She was always starting drama, lying, hooking up with guys, drinking, doing drugs, partying, and just pretty much awful. At no point in the book does it give her any character growth as to why she acts the way she does. It mentions that she started doing these things a few months prior to the end of their junior year of high school and she progressively got worse as the story went on, but it never shows us the root of her issues. There was definitely a missed opportunity there. Ryan\’s character was a tough one to pin down for me. He was a total douche at the start of the book. All he wanted was to hook up with Livvy, but by the end, he had truly fallen for her. It was almost like I didn\’t want to forgive his douchebaggery just because he develops real feelings for Livvy and at times felt that Livvy should feel the same. Livvy\’s character was confusing at times. She is attracted to Ryan, who is a douche if you remember, and is rebuffing his advances in the beginning but when she realizes that they have chemistry she is all in and chases after him and ignores said douchebaggery. I am honestly not sure if I liked Livvy\’s character or not. At certain times I did, and others I didn\’t. I wish that we could have seen things from different POVs like in the prequel novella. I would have liked to get into everyone\’s head. The romance, if it can be called that, was entertaining. Very entertaining and dramatic. And some parts got pretty heated and very graphic. This is a young adult book, but like Paper Princess by Erin Watts, it pushes some boundaries in this area. This is not a book that I think I would feel comfortable letting my high school aged child read. The book is definitely geared toward older teenagers. The cliffhanger was totally mean. Just saying. Overall, this is definitely a story that will suck you in. If you can\’t handle teenage drama then this book may not be for you. If reading about teenagers dabbling at romance and friendships appeals to you then you\’re in good shape with this one. This book is full of drama, frenemies, betrayal, love triangles, and star-crossed lovers. You won\’t want to put it down once you start reading.

Olivia winds up in a love triangle with Dustin and Ryan. Dustin has been Olivia\’s BFF along with Emily since they were young. Dustin wants more but Olivia is reluctant to go there. She fears things will change with Dustin and Emily if they are a couple. Emily was supposedly also Olivia\’s BFF but I didn\’t see it during this book. Emily was a girl who wanted attention any way she could get it and used alcohol and weed to fuel her life. Olivia was blind to Emily\’s destructive ways until the end of this book and was quite naive about it. Olivia was all over the place herself, first liking Dustin, then liking Ryan, then still confused about both of them. Ryan was a man-wh**e who suddenly dumped his friends-with-benefits with Em and went after Olivia. Emily shares her and Dustin\’s hook-ups and Olivia feels betrayed by both of them. It didn\’t make sense at times since she and Dustin did the same thing to Em prior to Olivia\’s 6 weeks in Oregon. With the love triangle and Amanda and Tuttle dancing around each other, the book was a hot mess at times. Olivia and Amanda had a hard time going after what they wanted and both of them were disingenuous at times about their feelings. The ending left way too much unanswered for me. Would give it 3.5 stars as I would have liked at least a little bit of resolution.

Just Friends is a fabulous YA with loads of teenage angst, love triangles and growth. I love the Dustin, Ryan, Olivia triangle. You feel for Olivia who had had a thing for her best friend Dustin for years and is torn by her instant attraction to Ryan. Then as most teenage love stories go truth comes out and trust is hard to get back. I love the chemistry between Olivia and Ryan. Ryan is more like the I\’m just an innocent bad boy and Dustin is more like I\’m just the innocent boy next door. Sometimes it is not who you think you\’ll fall for. I love the growing friendship Olivia forms with Amanda after the betrayal of her bestie Em. I cannot wait to see what happens with Amanda and Jordan in the next book and get a little more Ryan and Livvy too.

The book is about high school drama and angst with three childhood friends torn apart after they (separately) hooked up with each other and kept it a secret. Nothing untoward about that, but this fails to apply the basic tenants of story telling. Writing a book is taking a stranger on a journey. The reader gets to see the world through a new lens and sees a character develop and change based on the circumstances he or she faces. While there are plenty of realistic details, Livy, the protagonist, doesn\’t exist outside of a number of stereotypic tropes in the form of short stories of uncontrollable hormones and angsty arguments but she never really develops as a person. In fact, if you took the last chapter and put it in front of the book, it wouldn\’t feel out of place. For those who might protest, think of your favorite character and whether he or she was the same at the end as they were at the beginning. Just like how we we have changed since high school, characters need a bit of room to grow. By the end of the book, all I\’m left with is whiplash and the big question, \”why?\” Why did these characters do the things they did? Why did they respond to shitty situations like they did? The only answer the book gives is hormones and youth, neither of which are particularly satisfying answers. To the author: you have a talent for capturing casual conversation, the bane of a writer\’s existence, in my opinion. You also nailed the setting and you have an ability to create individual voices for each of your characters. Don\’t stop writing, just keep growing 🙂

This book is basically about a group of really rather obnoxious teenagers, but bizarrely thats what I liked most about the book. It made a refreshing change to read about teens being typical teenagers. Making mistakes; getting into trouble; resenting any kind of parental control but equally as upset with any lack of parental control. We\’ve all been there! The downside to this book though for me was the ending. To say it was abrupt was an understatement and there are so many loose threads left hanging. I know there\’s a book 2 and yes I will be reading it but its about a different character so I\’d have liked the end of Olivia\’s story at least before moving on to Amanda.

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