All of You by Christina Lee
Released: September 17, 2013
New Adult
Penguin
Reviewed by Mandi
I was drawn to this book because the hero is a virgin and the heroine is more promiscuous. I love this, or at least the idea of this because usually those roles are reversed. Even better, Avery our heroine, doesn’t walk around with shame or guilt for behavior. She is your average college student who has friends with benefits and is happy. When she meets Bennett at a party and can’t get over how attracted she is to him, she makes a move to get him to go home with her. But Bennett doesn’t respond to her advances. Avery is bummed but moves on. However, the next day she notices he moves into her apartment building. When Bennett stops an intruder from getting into her window one night, they bond over that. When he lets her crash at his place for a few nights, they become even closer.
Avery is dealing with leftover emotions from her step-father trying to rape her when she grew up. And a mother who doesn’t really care. Bennett is dealing with a mother who doesn’t put a lot of effort into raising her kids, so they have messy parental issues in common.
So that is what we are dealing with in this book. It didn’t really do it for me though. Bennett is written as this almost god-like figure. He is so amazing and so perfect, and I got tired of it. And also I don’t feel like we really get to know Bennett all that well. We really only get to see him interact with Avery and briefly with his family. Besides being perfect, he doesn’t have a ton of personality.
Avery on the other hand had more depth. I’m not sure you can read a new adult book these days without the heroine having some sort of traumatic abusive past, as Avery does. She comes out of it mostly unscathed although she feels scared of commitment. So when they acknowledge their attraction, and Bennett tells Avery he won’t sleep with anyone until he truly loves that person, Avery immediately falls back, because she can’t commit to anyone that deep. So they bumble forward in this friendship/relationship until true love emerges. There wasn’t enough meat in the story to keep me hooked.
It’s a sweet story, but not quite for me.
Rating: C-
Well, boo.
I was just kind of bored with this one. :( I rarely ever dnf a book and I only made it 30% in.
I disliked Avery from the very beginning. And all the name calling between her and her two best friends started to get old after awhile. I really wanted to like this book more than I did, oh well.