Shortlisted for Romantic Novelist Association Young Adult Romantic Novel 2014
| Irresistible by Liz Bankes | |
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| Category: Teens | |
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Reviewer: Robert James
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| Summary: Anything but Irresistible, characters who are staggeringly difficult to like make this one to avoid. | |
| Buy? No | Borrow? No |
| Pages: 224 | Date: April 2013 |
| Publisher: Piccadilly Press | |
| ISBN: 978-1848123380 | |
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After finishing her GCSEs, Mia gets a job at Radleigh Castle, working as a waitress. She quickly meets fellow worker Dan, who she likes, but is he the boy for her - or would she be better off with Jamie, son of the owners and all-around arrogant idiot. Incredibly, it's a somewhat harder decision than that last sentence would suggest.
I reviewed another book recently and said that the problem was that I could put virtually everyone in it into one of two categories - those I definitely hated and those I probably hated. This suffers from similar problems. Mia is a vapid and obnoxious narrator who should be turning somersaults in delight that anyone is interested in someone with barely any redeeming qualities, rather than trying to get her hands on two boys. Dan is so wet that he should invest in flood defences, while Jamie is absolutely vile. I'm struggling to think of any other character in teen contemporary fiction who has quite so little going for him, and this makes it extremely hard to care about the love triangle.
The 15 rating screams 'publicity stunt', by the way - it's hardly explicit, and there's probably more sex scenes or frank talk about sex in dozens of teen books released last year without that gimmick. In particular, a passage in which Mia talks to Jamie's girlfriend about touching herself feels so shoehorned in to try and be controversial that it's almost laughable, while the supposedly steamy scenes here are rather bland, when compared to the heat levels of Adorkable by Sarra Manning or The Hollow by Jessica Verday series.
The dialogue is pretty good and Bankes captures the setting fairly well, but that's nowhere near enough to make up for the dreadful characters here.
Not recommended.
For a steamy 'mature young adult/new adult' read which does live up to the hype, don't miss Easy by Tammara Webber.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Irresistible by Liz Bankes at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
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