Author: Jessica Love
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary Romance
Source: St Martin's Press via NetGalley
Goodreads
Hannah Cho and Nick Cooper have been best friends since 8th grade. They talk for hours on the phone, regularly shower each other with presents, and know everything there is to know about one another.Review by Nara
There's just one problem: Hannah and Nick have never actually met.
Hannah has spent her entire life doing what she's supposed to, but when her senior year spring break plans get ruined by a rule-breaker, she decides to break a rule or two herself. She impulsively decides to road trip to Las Vegas, her older sister and BFF in tow, to surprise Nick and finally declare her more-than-friend feelings for him.
Hannah's surprise romantic gesture backfires when she gets to Vegas and finds out that Nick has been keeping some major secrets. Hannah knows the real Nick can't be that different from the online Nick she knows and loves, but now she only has night in Sin City to figure out what her feelings for Nick really are, all while discovering how life can change when you break the rules every now and then.
In Real Life is basically that book you want to read when you’ve been reading too many epic fantasies or heavy mystery/thrillers. It’s fluffy, it’s simple, it’s a quick, easy read. It’s completely predictable, but this is actually a relatively good thing in terms of a fluffy contemporary romance.
I feel like the book could get pretty frustrating at times, but that was the nature of the plot- a bit of drama was necessary to keep things rolling, and it was normal for frustration to arise from the drama. I definitely think that the book was pretty dang simplistic overall; if you break down the drama, there’s not too much meat to the plot. But again, this was a relatively okay thing considering this was a fluffy contemporary romance.
The romance was cute at times, but I’m not really sure that I shipped it that much. I think this is mostly because I wasn’t the biggest fan of the love interest Nick. He just seemed really tactless in certain situations, with the whole girlfriend thing. And the resolution of all the romance related drama at the end was a bit average.
Yeah...so basically this book was just a very easy, almost mindless read. It’s good to wash out your palate if you’ve been reading a lot of heavier books, but I probably wouldn’t recommend it to most people.
It was okay
RatingsOverall: 6/10
Plot: 3/5
Romance: 3/5
Writing: 4/5
Characters: 3/5
Cover: 3/5
