"Tell me now if you want to stop."
Kayleigh Jacobs is determined to make college the best experience she can. It's freshman year and she has everything under control. Well, except for her eating disorder and crippling anxiety. It probably doesn't help that her roommate is the textbook definition of perfect, or that she is dating the one guy Kayleigh cannot stand.
Holden Rivers is a junior and the hottest guy on campus. He's a member of the best fraternity, has both girls and boys dying for his attention, and is a pompous jerk. His arrogance is just one of the many things that drive Kayleigh absolutely mad.
When Holden uncovers Kayleigh’s closest kept secret, chaos ensues. Her carefully managed life will never be the same again. Then again, all the best romances start with broken hearts.
Sleepless November is the first in a four book contemporary romance series. This story mixes real life issues with fall-hard, love of a lifetime romance.
Immerse yourself in the tumultous love affair of Kayleigh and Holden, and start this series now.
Sometimes you just need a college enemies-to-lovers filled with a lot of misunderstanding, distrust and issues, and a really deep connection that’s totally unwarranted but something you dream of having at that age with the most popular guy in school. (Luckily for me, that part was my reality, I got my dream man without all the angst and drama but who says I can’t read about it anyway?) The SLEEPLESS NOVEMBER SAGA was exactly that for me. It was like AFTER but with more fade to black sex scenes but just as stubborn characters.
Firstly any character named Holden has my attention which is actually what lead me to pick up the first book. I saw a scene on BookTok from the book (about 71% of the way through the book actually) and could feel the despair the characters were experiencing and all the angst just from that one page. I immediately downloaded it from Kindle Unlimited because, well duh. I want to be perfect clear, I was not disappointed. I love the occasional book with all sorts of the trust issues and personal issues these kids have. I try to treat every book I read as it’s own little world, not comparing it to others that are similar and I take it at face value. Did it make me laugh? Did it make me feel? Did it invoke any other emotions or bring up any personal memories I have? If yes, then it’s doing its job and I will continue reading. Yes it was over the top sometimes but when you’re 19 and in love, everything feels like the end of the world and every problem is blown up! I found the characters difficult to root for, even the background characters, which kind of make it fun for me to read because I really didn’t want the main two to be a couple until the second book and even then most of the time I thought, “you need to wise up or you need to break up,” which I have said to many of my friends in college. It should be stated: Holden is a total frat boy jerk who has the world at his feet but feels caged into a specific role anyway, and Kayleigh is a bit of a stuck up brat when it comes to him in the latter books and in book one she's also stuck up but in a rebellious "I'm different than most girls" kind of way. I attributed their faults to them being “human” and young. They get a bit better as the books go on and surprisingly, I personally think Holden grow up more than Kayleigh does.
While the personal issues in this book, especially book one, were a bit extreme (there is eating disorder and substance abuse problems, drugs and alcohol) I felt like a lot of it was blown up to a bigger issue than it needed to be especially being that the characters continue to drink throughout the series. It didn't bother me too much although in book three I got annoyed when a mother openly asked if a character was using again, but I had to reel it in and think, "wouldn't most parents ask in the given circumstance?" The answer was yes. So I had to just move forward with reading. Sometimes when reading a book that ties into real world problems that the reader had any relation too, it can be more difficult to read. I pushed through and by the end of the saga I did have fun. Book three was a bit more rough for me because of the twist. The twist was hinted at from very early on in the saga so it was not shocking by any means, and it did almost make me stop once I realized where it was going but truly I wanted to see where this dysfunctional, overprotective couple ended. I enjoyed it!
Rating: 3.6/5
No comments:
Post a Comment