Taken from my blog-

I am a Book of the Month affiliate. What that means is if you click my Book of the Month links, I get a small portion of the sale. As an affiliate, I also get, on occasion, the opportunity to pick one of the picks ahead of time to read it, so I can review it at the beginning of the month.

This month, after looking at the picks, I knew I wanted three of them and the new book Into the Water by Paula Hawkins, which can be free for you this month by clicking my link and using the code "Water" and purchasing a 3 month subscription. There's the shill :-)

Back to the story, I knew I wanted three of them, but The Love Interest didn't seem up my alley, so I requested that one. I knew it wasn't my type of book, but I wanted to challenge myself.

I am writing that up front because, it definitely wasn't my type of book. To me, it read like an anime, but in novel form. It did flip the script on the love triangle and had a good concept, but the writing style threw me off that I stopped enjoying the book.

The story is told from Caden's perspective, who is a 'Nice.' (Yes, really) He is a sculpted spy who is to have the role of the nice guy to seduce the woman they are spying on. He is up against Dylan, who is a 'Bad' (yes, really). He is also out to seduce the woman, but is playing the bad boy. He too is sculpted to be attractive to the woman.

The two are in competition with one another and whomever wins, the other is killed off. As the two set off, something starts happening to Caden. He starts thinking about Dylan more and more. As they are in competition with one another, they start realizing they are attracted to one another and the triangle flips. What will happen?

The great thing is this is truly a script flip in the sense that this begins as the typical teen romance, even going so far as calling one 'Nice' and one 'Bad.' It was a nice twist to have this also be a gay romance novel for teens. That was incredibly clever.

The challenges Caden has are also very good. He is conflicted not only with Dylan, but Dylan also feeds into Caden's 'bad' side. He convinces Caden to do things that nice guys wouldn't do. It was fun to be in Caden's head.

The bad part was that Caden speaks like a teenager most of the time. There were some sentences where I not only stated "no guy would say that," but also thought "this makes no sense." There were also some difficulties of how Caden could know so much about certain things, but not know what coffee is like. The writing just gave me a lot of trouble that I couldn't get past. It wasn't a book for me.

Sadly, I gave this one 2.5 stars for the script flip and focusing on a gay relationship, but the writing took me out of enjoying the book.
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Man, I wanted to like this book so much, but it just didn't deliver. The world building was incredibly thin and the effectiveness of the two boys absurdly adhering to tropes was completely undercut by the fact that none of the other characters had more depth or realism to them. I kept waiting for Juliet to reveal that she too was lying all along and was like, using the boys to get close to the LIC which she'd already learned of or something, because she seemed as fake as either of the boys. And you're telling me that this has been going for centuries in our world? With no real explanation as to how that could possibly work or why they target teens (seriously "you haven't read many YA books have you" is not an explanation, it's a joke, why on earth would they try to pair people up permanently in high school)? There's so much suspension of disbelief involved across the board that I just couldn't let that slide. Great premise in theory, but the writing and world building were just...young.

Two stars because it wasn't like, actively offensive, just bad. ( )

Hm. I... enjoyed this book. Tentatively.
The main characters' romance is well-developed and builds at a good pace. The concept of Love Interests works better than you'd think, bringing a lot of interesting tension to the three main characters' relationship, and the novel plays with and subverts the love triangle trope (and the writing of gay characters in general) in fun ways. I found it interesting that equal focus was put on both the false romance (between the narrating Love Interest and the person he was assigned to) and the endgame one (between the two competing Love Interests), and I like that the girl wasn't villainized and came to be seen as a friend. Overall, the character relationships and romance worked well for me.
But when the development of these relationships gets left behind for action scenes and dramatic ultimatums, the story stops working. The last part of the novel depends strongly on the worldbuilding, which is the weakest part of the story. Why does this organization with super-advanced tech only use it to partner up powerful people? Why does this teenage girl use her genius only for inventions that have combat applications? How did these kids raised in batches to be expendable come out anywhere close to well-socialized? The answer, of course, is narrative reasons.
This part of the story is hard to follow, simply because of the sheer amount of un-foreshadowed information being revealed, and a lot of the character and plot development at this point seems like part of an arc that the rest of the book has not been following. It feels like part of an earlier draft.
I was pleasantly surprised by the first 3/4 of this book, and disappointed by the end. I really liked the characters, but their arcs did not come to satisfying ends, and the plot was altogether disjointed. I would recommend it to someone looking for cute, gay, YA romance and a light read. Overall, I enjoyed it, but not as much as I could have. ( )

Very promising beginning before it fizzles out. The ending gets a little cheesy and violent. It honestly feels like a mood whiplash. The story pokes fun at obvious YA tropes while wrapped in a spy theme until the blandness of the characters collapses underneath its weight.

Ain’t nobody really interesting in this book. Juliet was pretty run-of-the-mill. She’s supposed to be quirky and awkward, a little bratty too. I forgot she was supposed to be a super genius. Caden himself wasn’t interesting but his circumstances were.

Overall, this is a unique story that would’ve benefited from a dual pov. I wanted to know what Dylan was thinking. He was too real for LIC. I wouldn’t have mind learning a bit more about M and D too. Like, how D had failed and why he was so surly.

About that Trevor mess: While I was upset with Caden glossing over Natalie’s valid hurt (especially since he was understandably torn up from the floor up when he saw Dyl making out with Juliet), that was a nice plot twist. I’m not even going to play with you. I didn’t see it coming.

Y’know, being upset over someone cheating is not irrational or unreasonable. TV shows are not indoctrinating no one on that, kay. Like, what type of dusty logic???

Also, the reporter was a grown woman. “Y’all are going to jail! Period!”

Another thing, I don’t know if Dyl was lying to Caden to save face or to hurt him so he wouldn’t mourn after his death, but that totally came out of left field. Sir, you are full of lies.
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Not what I was hoping for, too bad, it sounded good.