Book: My Favorite Mistake
Rating:
Synopsis: Taylor Caldwell can't decide if she wants to kiss her new college roommate or punch him.
On the one hand, Hunter Zaccadelli is a handsome, blue-eyed bundle of charm. On the other, he's a tattooed, guitar-playing bundle of bad boy. Maybe that's why Taylor's afraid of falling in love with him, or anyone else. She doesn't want to get burned, and even though her other roommates adore him, she wants him gone before it's too late.
Hunter himself has been been burned before, but the fact that Taylor calls him out on his crap and has the sexiest laugh ever make him decide maybe love isn't a lost cause. They make a bet: if she can convince him she truly loves or hates him, he'll leave the apartment--and leave her alone. The problem is, the more time they spend together, the less she hates him, and the more she moves toward love.
But when the man who holds the key to Taylor's fear of giving up her heart resurfaces and threatens to wreck everything, she has to decide: trust Hunter with her greatest secret, or do everything in her power to win that bet and drive him away forever.
Review:
(guys, there may be a few spoilers ahead)
Oh well.
This one took quite a lot of my energies, didn't it?
I first read of My Favorite Mistake on goodreads, because it was supposed to be similar to Beautiful Disaster, by Jamie McGuire, a book I personally love.
Which such a premise, I already knew it would be hard for this one to beat BD, not to count that I couldn't help comparing the two of them.
Result: I am sorry, Chelsea M. Cameron, but you lost.
My Favorite Mistake is the story of Taylor, a sophomore girl with a traumatic past attending UMaine college, and Hunter, a sophomore boy with a traumatic past attending UMain college.
Oh wait, did I repeat myself?
Oh dear, yes I did.
In fact, my darlings, our author here exceeded herself. You know how some readers are continuously lamenting that the guy with a traumatic past is so clichè and needs to be given up? Well here, guys, we've got BOTH OF THEM with a traumatic past.
That makes for a pretty messed up storyline.
First of all, I would like to state a few points about our main character, Taylor.
Taylor is nuts.
Not as in, "oh, she's a bit nuts, but in a cute way."
No.
She's nuts.
When Hunter makes his first appearance, the girl pretty much has a neurotic crisis (it's a lot that she didn't faint or anything!).
Here you already undersand that she's had some kind of trauma that prevents her from getting to close to people (or guys). I got that. I even pretty much figured out what her trauma was, although I wasn't sure at the time.
However, she was definitely out of line in that. She didn't just fear Hunter, she treated him like shit. For about a quarter of the book, she insults him (both saying it to us and saying it to his face) and tells him to fuck off, because she hates him.
Now. I do not know this girl personally (since she doesn't exist and all), but I highly doubt this was the first boy she saw in eight years. True, he was the first one to have to sleep in her same room, but hating him like that? The guy had done absolutely nothing wrong.
It didn't make sense.
And I'm blaming this on the author. Whatever made YA writers think that teens hating on each other are hot..
Next, there's Hunter.
Now here's a cool guy. I liked his character, as a person.
But as for his background.. eh. Could've been better. I don't know what exactly I was expecting, but.. ugh. Whatever. I'm a bitch. Get on with it.
It's not that I don't get these guys' traumas. I do. But I just feel they're not <i>enough.</i> Enough of an excuse to behave the way they did. Hunter was kind of okay, 'cause he hadn't that many problems in the end, but Taylor..
it just felt like everything was too forced to suit the author's wishes. Semi-rape so the MC would still be a virgin and we could have this really good first time with the tattoed guy.
Aaagh, it's really hard for to write this review. Because I know I'm being a bitch and I'm being stupid.
When I think about it, there's nothing wrong with this book. Nothing at all. It's kinda good. But I just didn't like it.
I told you, I couldn't help comparing it to BD and it didn't live up to Beautiful Disaster's standards.
Even the ending bothered me. What happened to Taylor was eight years ago. I know that Travis (ha! Travis! BD reference again) really hurt her and pretty much killed her innocence, but still. There should be space for redemption, shouldn't it? This guy had spent eight years of his life in jail. He had to have thought and considered what he'd done. Maybe he really had repented. Maybe he'd understood the weight of his actions and he was really sorry. But they didn't even give him the benefit of the doubt.
This wasn't a book about growth, it was a book about moving on. Taylor just moved on in the sense that she abandoned what had happened to her. She didn't try to analize it. She didn't go up to Travis and say, "are you even sorry?" She didn't go up to him and tell him what she really thought of him. She just let the tribunal do it for her with no second thoughts.
I didn't like that, people.
Also, two questions that've been bugging me every since I finished the book:
1) Hadn't Taylor said at the beginning of the book that she couldn't move out of the house because she had, like, a special scolarship that made her stay there? So why at the end of the book happens what happens?
2) How can Travis have a girlfriend if he spent eight years in prison? Was she in jail too or what?
In the end My Favorite Mistake wasn't a bad book, but it didn't even hook me the way I expected and hoped for. I love the title, I hate the cover, the book's a mix of the two.
Three stars to make it a tie.
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