The hook may not be an entirely accurate description of this book. "He's an egotistical snowboarder with a silver medal. She's a judgmental honors student with a flair for photography." and "When all they can see is each other's flaws, how can Jake and Sophie work together...." Jake was definitely somewhat egotistical, but not as much as I expected from the book description, and Sophie did judge Jake (because he tailgated her really badly and smiled at her as he drove past while she was getting a ticket,) but she didn't really judge most of the other characters. In fact, as a general rule she seemed like she tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. As for them only being able to see the worst in each other...that didn't last very long for either of them, especially Jake. Anyway, inaccurate description aside, this was a really good book.

Jake won a silver medal in the Olympics, and now has to settle back down to regular life. After all the excitement of snowboarding and the Olympics, he has difficulty adjusting to public school, and to the attention he gets. Because most everyone he meets asks him for an autograph, he just expects people to want his attention. He does have a bit of an attitude, which would be annoying if it wasn't clear pretty quickly that he's going to learn how to be better. At least he could tell that Mallory's behavior was fake and wasn't seduced by the fact that she was a pretty girl who would do just about anything to get him to date her. He falls for Sophie really quickly. She's beautiful, smart, honest, and doesn't treat him like a god. He has to learn to be more than his fame in order to gain her friendship. He may not be trying to learn in school, but he is trying really hard to learn in life. He takes what Rachel says seriously, about using his fame to do good, and he is more than willing to learn from her story about her dead friend. He takes Sophie seriously, when she tells him that his behavior makes him seem like a conceited jerk, and doesn't even get mad (in his place I think I would have gotten defensive and angry, then realized that she was right later, and tried to apologize, and tried to do better.) I don't really like the whole 'oh, my friend is in danger because of me. I'll hurt her so she will stay away from me and be safe' attitude that Jake adopts, but it's something that I've seen in other characters in other books (most notably Jaron in [b: The Runaway King|15703770|The Runaway King (The Ascendance Trilogy, #2)|Jennifer A. Nielsen|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1351133357s/15703770.jpg|21365340],) so it must not be a completely inaccurate way to think.

Sophie is smart and honest. Her honesty sets her apart from the other girls trying to get Jakes attention, and it's something that I think will be very important for both her and Jake in the future. If you are friends with someone famous, you really do need to have the kind of honesty that will allow you to tell them when they are being a jerk. Sophie is actually sort of vulnerable. She has trouble believing that Jake would like her, and so doesn't have much trouble believing him when he pretends he never cared about her. Is she judgmental? Well, yes a little bit. She didn't like Jake at first, but he had tailgated her really badly. It was more judgmental of her to expect him to be a jerk to Mitchell just because he was famous. She doesn't like Mallory. Mallory was probably mean to her in the past, and it just wasn't detailed in the book, but even a stereotypical mean girl has something going on in her life to make her act like a stereotypical mean girl. I actually think it would be nice if Leslea Wahl wrote a book about Mallory to show why she acted the way she did. There were three ways that I think Sophie's character could have been improved. The first would be for her not to have had the idea to try to write an article destroying Jake's reputation. She didn't like him and he asked her to do his homework, but the fact that she considered such an article lowers her character somewhat, and the train of thought wasn't particularly important to the story line. It's only purpose was to get her to spend time with Jake, which could have been accomplished some other way. The next thing is her treatment of her best friend Kate. There was this weird balance in Sophie. She was half way the kind of character I read about in normal fiction, who is gossiping with her best friend forever, and the kind of characters I've read about more in Catholic fiction, who are sort of homeschooler-ish, content to spend time by themselves. Sophie struck a weird balance of these two in her interaction with her friend, when, one moment they would be talking about boys, and the next Sophie would be wondering if she should tell Kate about spending time with Jake in the tunnels. It ended up being fine, but as she continued to keep things from Kate I could see how Sophie and Kate's relationship could end the way I have seen in other books where the main character acts that way. The last thing was Sophie's 'I hate you but I still have a crush on you because you're cute' attitude towards Jake. Even though she didn't want to have a crush on him, her behavior around him made it clear that she did, when I feel like she was not so shallow that she should behaved that way.

I really liked the relationship between Sophie and Jake.Especially because they became friends before looking for romance. I hope they get married some day.

I really liked the characters and the story with this book, and I always think it's kind of cool when I'm reading a book that takes place in my state. ( )