Book Reviews

Jaded Heart

Do not read this review if you do not want spoilers.

Synopsis:

Joshua and Leighton are both broken teens who come from terrible families. But their relationship together might just be the one things that can fix them both.

Grammar:

     The preface of the novel was a little repetitive because the author kept using the same sentence structures over and over again. I would have preferred  the author to use the same spacing they had at the beginning of the novel in the end of the novel as well. Towards the last couple of chapters  their paragraphs were very long and there was not much space between the lines of dialogue which made it hard to read. Overall there weren't any grammar mistakes that really took my focus away from the story so I give this book 5 out of 5 on grammar.

Plot:

The beginning of the story was great but the ending was terrible. For starters, in the beginning of the novel we find out that Leighton's love interest Joshua is the son of the leader of a gang based in Naples  Italy and his mother was killed in an attack. We also learn that he is engaged to marry the daughter of the leader Cricels. Throughout the story Leighton growing comfortable enough with Joshua to trust him and tell him about her abusive grandfather is a big plot line. I think the possibility of Leighton finding out that Joshua is part of gang and was lying to her about his identity could have been a big point of conflict. It also could have been really interesting to see how the Cricels reacted to Joshua's relationship with Leighton. But the author didn't really explore any of those possibilities in the book. Instead they chose to focus on a Leighton's conflict with Susan. Who was pretty much just a typical cliché queen bee character who wanted to completely destroy Leighton's relationship with Joshua but had no real motivation for doing so. To top it all of at the end of the book Joshua dies with absolutely no build up or foreshadowing at all. He just perished in a random fire. I give this story a 3 out of 5 on the plot because I hated the ending.

Charecter Development:

I thought the two main characters Joshua and Leighton were very well developed. The author added in lots of small details that made them both feel real. One of my favorite character traits was that Leighton always kept her hair short because her grandfather forced her to. However, I though that Joshua's two friends David and Lincoln were pretty boring and sense they had little to no bearing on the plot and could have been turned into one character. I also thought that Susan's character was pretty boring as well. She struck me as just  a basic queen bee cliché character with no original personality. I don't think she had any real motivation for trying to destroy Joshua and Leighton's relationship other than  having a crush with Joshua. I give this story 4 out of 5 stars on character development.

Theme:

The theme that I got from this book was that sometimes you need to let other people in because  sometimes you're  not strong to deal with your problems all by yourself. In my opinion this novel really stressed that having  friends is important for mental and emotional support. My only critique is that at the end of the novel a random old woman showed and up and basically went on a whole spiel to directly tell the readers the importance of letting people in even though you are afraid you might get hurt. I thought that came of a little cheesy and like the author was trying to shove the theme of the story down the reader's throats. I give this book 4 out of 5 starts on theme.

Conclusion:

Overall I give this book book 4 out of 5 starts. I recommend it to people who like romances that don't have smut, just be aware that the ending is terrible.