August 2, 2017

[Review] The Way It Hurts - Patty Blount

Summary: There may be two sides to every story, but sometimes there’s only one way to set things right…

Music is Elijah’s life. His band plays loud and hard, and he’ll do anything to get them a big break. He needs that success to help take care of his sister, who has special needs. So he’d rather be practicing when his friends drag him to a musical in the next town…until the lead starts to sing.

Kristen dreams of a career on stage like her grandmother’s. She knows she needs an edge to get into a competitive theater program—and being the star in her high school musical isn’t going to cut it. The applause and the attention only encourage her to work harder.

Elijah can’t take his eyes off of Kristen’s performance, and his swooning face is captured on camera and posted with an out-of-context comment. It goes viral. Suddenly, Elijah and Kristen are in a new spotlight as the online backlash spins out of control. And the consequences are bigger than they both could have ever imagined because these threats don’t stay online…they follow them into real life.
(Pub Date: Aug 1, 2017)

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Kristen has always criticized Elijah's band on a social media site focused on artists, at times attracting a streak of offenses from band members and too-dedicated fans. It is at least an irony that the moment the first meet, the two feel attract and Elijah knows his band needs exactly what only Kristen's talent can provide. And he's desperate enough to get money for his sister to do anything.

I think this story had a real good idea, and the book presented great situations that show how scary the internet can be nowadays. In theory, it was so good I feel it's a pity it didn't translate into a superb book. It's still nice. I'd give it 3.5 but the many flaws got in the way of rounding it up.

I think this shouldn't have been a romance. Kristen and Elijah's relationship is too twisted, and I didn't get the feeling of love conquers all that was needed to convince me they could work. Still, they for sure were characters that felt real.

First, we have Kristen, who is basically an internet troll without even noticing. Her messages to the band are offensive, she stirs up the fans and she never gives up, always ready to criticize the same things. as chauvinistic as the band's lyrics and behavior could be, two wrongs don't make a right. (And aside from a pogo stick mention, we only saw them behaving like that but never the lyrics themselves to have an opinion of our own).

And yes, Elijah misbehave on purpose, because that's what he understands metal is, what their fans like. It took him really long to notice his ways and I'm not so confident he really changed. He uses Kristen, despite her objections, and allow it all to explode. He's too blind to notice all the fame the fake online battle between Kristen and him attracted to care about Kristen's actual safety in the real world. And the worst is it's almost all forgiven just because that was just his persona, he's not really like that.

I acknowledge the characters did change through the book. But I don't think it was enough, which does happen in real life. Really, who changes 100%? But when you're reading a romance, you want to cheer for the characters and that is hard when there's a bad aftertaste. Also, the side characters could have been more than stereotypes, maybe that could have distracted me.

This would have been a great story if the author's goal wasn't so obviously the romance. As such, I think she failed to give each of them the redemption they needed.

Still, this was nice, and intense, and surely engaging. Notwithstanding my critic on the side characters, I think the author portrayed Elijah's sister very well, she's autistic and that for sure demanded a hell lot of research she could have easily avoided. Not that I'm knowledgeable in the topic but for me it seemed much superior to what others are doing out there.

This is a good book but it brings sensitive content and sure lots of possible triggers, like online abuse. It's really a twisted story, which was given a romance treatment. It's not that it doesn't knowledge the former—unlike Hush, Hush or Twilight—, it really does. But it doesn't do enough, in my opinion, to leave us with those dreamy eyes romances were supposed to. At last, this was my first Patty Blount but her talent is undeniable; there will be a next.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

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