Blake is a guy that lives on the streets and everyday he sees this beautiful girl with a smile always for him that he lives for. He comes from a rough background and a past that still haunts him but after some time getting to know Alicia their connection becomes more and now he wants more, but there are some things in this world that are trying to stop them from being together. Lucia comes from a nice home and as she smiles everyday at the the homeless guy she realizes there is more to him than meets the eye and as she starts to fall for him can they reach their happy ever after or do they just come from too opposite walks in life to survive? The twists and turns in this story had me wanting to read more and the brotherhood the guys shared was amazing and strong. Such a great start to a series!! ( )

This is self-evidently terrible for a few reasons, but it is worth talking about. On the surface, a romance between a psychology grad student and a homeless man with a tortured past--a far-fetched enough storyline that I checked it out and yep, it's ascended Twilight fanfic. Without the framework of "these characters belong together" it makes for a pretty bizarre offering, with Blake's overtures equal parts sweet and upsetting.

Lest that seem like enough to sustain a book, there is melodrama and violence aplenty. I read this with a friend and every 5% or so we frantically told each other YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NOW. Each twist/development outshone the last. Ultimately this is three romances, one of which gets pretty short shrift but is likely the craziest of the lot.

I do have to point out that the sequel about Beckett is supposed to hit in a few months and people seem to really swoon over his bad-boy-i-tude. To that, let me just say that he is bored waiting in line at a bank for 10 minutes and sexually harasses a woman for fun. A pretty cool guy.

There are over-the-top melodramatic declarations on almost every page, and while "show don't tell" doesn't always hold up, I like that we get a paragraph of "by the way, they all decided that Livia was not treating Blake like a patient, despite her area of study, so don't worry about that."

All in all it makes me ask myself: should everyone write? This is a serious line of inquiry. The likes of Debra Anastasia and the other twific authors who have found selfpub success speak often and openly about their drive to write, characters who whisper in their ears, dropping writing advice and encouraging readers that anyone can do it.

This is technically true and good luck to you, I suppose, but there's no literary ambition here, despite breathless insistence by its adherents that this is a "different type of love story" or something similar. Or that it's a "guilty pleasure" that doesn't aspire to anything else. I suppose I enjoyed it, in that sense, but it's inherently and in execution a ridiculous piece--not because it started as a fanfic but because fanfic initially gives the author so much framework to "skip past"--premade characters, new setting. Oh, the Alice is tall and the Jasper has darker skin? Original characters, substantially changed from the source material. (This isn't really true, one will discover upon locating a PDF of the original, a difficult but manageable task.) Write fanfiction. It's fun, you get built-in readers who care, you build a community, whatever. Publish it--at this point you're not really taking a bite from Stephenie Meyers' apple. But if you do, try a little harder. ( )

Becket marryme D: ( )

This is a DNF for now. I liked what I read and will come back to it, but I'm just not into this genre right now so I'm putting this aside for now.

3.5 stars

My rating went up and down the entire time with this book. I loved some parts, and some parts were a little off (but not bad). Overall I liked it and will continue with the series. I started with Poughkeepsie Begins, which was a 5 star read for me. ( )