My Favorite Mistake by
Chelsea M. Cameron
My rating: 1 of 5 genies
Published: September 29, 2012
Pages: 416
Publisher: Createspace
Source: Purchased
Format: eBook
Genre: New Adult, Romance, Contemporary
Goodreads Summary
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.
My Review
This book was not what I expected. The premise of
My Favorite Mistake promises a refreshing New Adult contemporary romance, a read that I found myself anticipating. Sadly, I couldn't even make myself finish reading the whole thing. There are a number of emotions associated with this read for me: anger, disappointment, but ultimately, exhaustion, just to name a few.
I got nothing out of reading this, and while I could very well rage about the poor characterization, lack of plot, and endless clichés present in this book, I am done wasting any more of my energy here. In fact, it is most definitely
not my favorite mistake. I'll give you the dirty, but my anger is spent. Kind of.
Me neither, buddy.
The Bad.
Have you ever disliked a character so much that a whole book seems to be ruined
just because of him/her? If so then you might know how I feel, and maybe where I'm coming from, when I say that Taylor - the female protagonist - completely ruined this book for me. She is just such an unlikable character! For starters, she spends the majority of the book's first quarter sulking around, whining that she ended up with Hunter as a roommate even though the living space at their college IS coed. She and two other rommates, Darah and Renee needed a fourth person and put up a vacancy. Hunter applied, got the spot through the officiates at housing, and one painfully long story short,
Taylor flips the shiz out.
She can't handle that the guy flirts with her, even though he flirted with both Darah and Renee
two filler characters and neither of them took it nearly as badly as she did. To my dismay, the first couple chapters were spent watching Taylor fight tooth and nail to reverse the aforementioned living arrangement. She lets the world know of her displeasure, and it is during one particularly contrived phone conversation with her mother that I realized things would get a lot worse before they got better.
It is my experience that in life, there are many people who never hear the truth, no cold hard facts plain and simple, from anyone, and Taylor struck me as being of this variety. Mainly because she has a problem, she lashes out when things don't go her way, and instead of people telling her to get her act together, they make stupid freaking allowances.
Sorry, Mary, it seems like everybody is ill here.
You get to know pretty quickly that she hates a lot of things: hates that Hunter flirts with her, she hates that he ended up in their coed dorm, and basically hates that he's a guy. Due to an incident in the past, Taylor is played off as this damaged girl with "issues" and her less than stellar past is supposed to justify this girl's constant griping.
Because she's damaged, right? Who hates on damaged characters?
Who wouldn't hate!? She complains about everything.
A lot of the time it was as though excuses were ALWAYS being made for Taylor. Upon their first meeting, she manages to punch Hunter in the face, a true display of totally volatile and over-the-top behaviour. Yet, we are to accept this as part of her nature:
oh nuh uh, Taylor doesn't put up with no shit, naw girl. In reality, we are to believe that it is all Hunter's fault that she felt
threatened. Taylor was protecting herself. The only problem in this brilliant theory? Even a donkey missing half its brain could put together that there wasn't any real danger to be had from Hunter. If he was going to try something, it would have been during their first night or week living together. I mean why wait, right?
He is incredibly built and I am expected to believe that if indeed he was a rapist he would not have jumped at the chance to pounce on Taylor, because? There's logic missing in that, Cameron. Yes, Hunter is an ass at times, making sexual references and flirting immediately with near-strangers does rank up on the douche scale of existence, but he isn't a bad guy. While his actions weren't exactly shining examples of gentlemanly conduct, Taylor had absolutely no right hitting him.
He takes it well, laughs the incident off, but it did made me sick how double standard it all was. Their situation, if reversed, would have left Hunter riding in the back of a secure van/car headed to the nearest police station for laying hands on Taylor. The girl wouldn't have even blinked before calling the cops, but somehow it is justifiable that she takes out her aggression on him, and he's supposed to be okay with it? She throws tantrums and explodes like an irresponsible child, but everyone just tip-toes around her, giving her space because otherwise
that bitch will find you, and then it'll all go to hell.
*sigh* He never saw it coming.*
I refuse to make any excuses for her, and by 35% into the book I just wanted out. You should know now that I most definitely did
not finish this book
my heart couldn't take it even though I spent money on it
Darn it! I tried to get to the 50% mark before calling it quits, but yeah, that didn't happen.
By the time I finally gave up, I just couldn't force myself to read any more. I should have
needed to read the story, wanted to engage with characters because good books are supposed to draw you in. Well,
My Favorite Mistake did the exact opposite and pushed me far away. I can see where Cameron was going with the storyline: damaged girl meets damaged boy, she can't trust/let people in
probably because she is too busy punching and abusing them, and neither can he, but the boy changes her. They fix each other? Aw, true wuv! The end.
Someone please kill me now.
Final Thoughts
No. Just no.
My Favorite Mistake lacks in several areas, the want most apparent in its poor characterization and weak story structure. Furthermore, I get that this is a college based story, New Adult means a higher level of sensuality and cussing of some sort, but would it kill these characters to actually speak intelligently? For once, without the meaningless cursing? The way they go about spouting profanities every second word really made me cringe. I respect an individual's right to speech, heck cursing is fun sometimes, but there is a problem when all the characters talk like they might have been recently displaced from the great Seven Seas. I especially hated God's name and "Jesus" being flung around. I've read New Adult, and loved it before, but never was the language so deplorable.
So there you have it. This book has me talking like my grandmother,
"deplorable," really? and I leave ultimately disappointed. The angry girl meets "perfect boy" set-up didn't work out for me. Taylor is too obnoxious and full of it, and Hunter never felt real. He's too perfect, a great singer, cook, and accomplished guitarist, along with other things.
I imagine that if My Favorite Mistake had even an ounce of his supposed brilliance, it would be a better book, and this, a very different review.
.5/5 genies: Utterly irredeemable, there was not a thing I liked about this book, a total miss.
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