Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Laura’s Review: The Ivy Lessons (Devoted #1) by Susanna Quinn




Basic Summary: Sophie Rose is accepted to an exclusive small acting college that is owned and ran by Marc Blackwell, one of the most famous actors in the world.  He takes one look at Sophie and knows he just has to have her, no matter the consequences.  Not only is he an experienced Dom, he’s loaded and dead sexy.


What I love About This Book:  The plot is great, an innocent girl going to a new college only to fall in love with her teacher, who just so happens to be star! Awesome! The detail involving the scenery around the characters was great.  When Sophie describes the look the college and her dorm room you really get a sense of it all looks like to her.  Marc Blackwell is a very intriguing character, who wouldn’t want to fall in love with a hot movie star?  (For me it’s Alexander Skarsgard) The premise of this book and the series as a whole is great. 


Cons:  Almost immediately I was kind of turned off I was turned off by the writing style of this book.  The sentences seem very fragmented making the characters seem a little robotic in their conversations.  I felt there was no real character development with anyone in the book.  It was almost like Sophie went from fighting her feelings about Marc, to wanting to be with him in the next chapter with no real progression.  Marc I felt was the same way; his domination of Sophie wasn’t very detailed and didn’t really flow from scene to the next.  There was no real description of the mannerisms of characters as well.  When Sophie is sitting and having conversations with Tom & Tanya, you kind of get their personalities from what they are saying but that’s it.  I don’t know what their body language is like while they are having conversations, what their actions are when they interacting with Sophie and some of the other drama students.  I wish there was more detail about the characters along with the conversations.  I would’ve felt more emotionally invested in Sophie and Marks relationship if I got what was going on around them, how they moved, how they held each other, etc. I also thought there were a lot of repeats of descriptions with no elaborations.  With Sophie’s father the author repeats like three times throughout the book how clumsy and unorganized he is, but there’s nothing added when it’s repeated.  Add more detail there when talking about the same thing over and over again so we truly feel like we really know these characters.   I think to me because there was such a lack in detail when it came to the characters other than their conversations I didn’t really like Sophie at all. 

                To me Sophie was a little whiny, much like Eva Trammell and Ana Steele.  I get this book series is modeled after 50 shades but after all these books doing the same thing the whiney protagonist gets really annoying.  Like each series I need something that even though it has a lot of the same characteristics as another series that will set it apart, and there really isn’t anything.  The sex scenes were very rushed, and I couldn’t really get in to them at all.  With each sex scene you want to entranced and feel like all this foreplay is driving you crazy just as much as the main character, it should be almost a whole chapter of foreplay and sex these sex scenes are like 3 pages.   Sophie didn’t really seemed that involved in the sex scenes as well, it was like it was just done to her, not her actually being a part of them.  

Overall:  I really couldn't get into this book emotionally because of the writing style.  Other people might be fine without character development, but I'm not one of those people.  The story line is great and the characters have really potential to be matched up against Ana & Christian but without really being invested in these characters its hard to do that.  

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