Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Crash Test Love by Ted Michael

The last thing Henry Arlington wants is a girlfriend. He's just very, very good with girls - reading their body language, knowing what they want to hear, and more importantly: getting them into the backseat of his car. But all that changes when he meets Garrett Lennox at one of the many Sweet Sixteen parties he crashes.

Garrett thinks she's done with guys. She was dumped by her ex when she moved from Chicago to Long Island, and now she realizes that she needs to find out who she is by herself, instead of witha boyfriend. What she really needs is some good friends.

Fortunately for Garrett, the J Squad - the "it" girls of East Shore High School - want her in their clique. All she has to do is pass one little test: get East Shore god Henry Arlington to take her to one the biggest Sweet Sixteens of the year, then dump him in front of everyone.

Garrett has promised herself not to fall for another guy, so playing with Henry's heart shouldn't be hard. Right?

And Henry doesn't fall for girls, so when he and Garrett start to click, it doesn't matter. Does it?

As William Shakespeare once said, "Love is blind," or in this case, the lovers may be, as Henry and Garrett fall in love - and into the trap that awaits them. Because neither of them can see what the girls of Henry Arlington's past have in store. (Taken from back cover)

I really enjoyed Crash Test Love. For some reason I'm always wary about romances written by men, but I loved The Diamonds by Ted Michael so I was expecting Crash Test Love to be good. And it was. I liked how it was written in alternating point-of-views so we could get each side of the story. It was nice to see the characters grow and develop as the story moved along, and with each of their point-of-views included, the reader could easily see the progress. In the beginning Garrett is really emotional and needs to have a boyfriend and Henry is the opposite. He hooks up with a lot of girls and is unable to get close to them. But by the end, they are practically different people, in a good way though. Another strong point for Crash Test Love was that it was extremely funny. Once while reading this I was drinking Gatorade and started laughing and actually choked on it. So be careful because you will laugh and you don't want anything in your mouth. As for the ending, the message was really good and I thought it was refreshing that it was not a traditional love story. I hope that doesn't give anything away, but you probably won't be expecting the ending that you read. But it's worth it. I promise.

8 out of 10.

FTC: I received this book through Random Buzzers.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It was pretty funny, I agree. I loved The J Squad because they were so ridiculous and had some of the best one liners haha.