BOOK REVIEW: The Deal by Elle Kennedy

BOOK REVIEW: The Deal by Elle Kennedy

Amazon
February 2015
eBook, £3.49
Reviewed by Aly Locatelli

10/10

“Just out of curiosity,” she says, “after you wake up in the morning, do you admire yourself in the mirror for one hour or two?”
“Two,” I reply cheerfully.
“Do you high five yourself?”
“Of course not.” I smirk. “I kiss each of my biceps and then point to the ceiling and thank the big man upstairs for creating such a perfect male specimen.”

Hannah is crushing on Justin, star football player of her college with a killer smile and broody eyes, but she’s too shy to make the first move and so spends her lectures hopelessly staring at him in the hopes that he will notice her.

He doesn’t know I’m alive.
For the millionth time in forty-five minutes, I sneak a peek at Justin Kohl’s direction, and he’s so beautiful it makes my throat close up. Though I should probably come up with another adjective– my male friends insist that men don’t like being called beautiful.

But he doesn’t even know her name, and Hannah quickly realises that if she wants to date Justin, she might have to be the one to make the first move.

Meet Garrett Graham — hockey captain with a quickly sinking GPA. After failing his Ethics mid-term, he knows he has to do something drastic to get his GPA up with a make-up test, or it’s bye-bye hockey team. So when he notices that Hannah received an A on her paper, he makes it his personal mission to get her to tutor him. When she strikes him down over and over again — by turning down everything from a fee, to booze, to party favours, even a cheeky date — he finally figures out a way to win her over: if Hannah agrees to tutor him in time for the Ethics make-up test, Garrett will play ‘pretend date’ to get Justin’s attention and help her win him over.

Recently I pointed out that the New Adult genre is a hard genre to nail. There’s too much angst, drama and recycling of story-lines to make the books interesting. The Deal took me by surprise and I fell in love with the characters, plot and setting. Hannah and Garrett’s friendship is full of banter, good-natured jokes and genuine love. Where Hannah starts off as cold and judgemental towards Garrett’s ‘manly’ ways, she quickly thaws when Garrett shows himself as a good, reliable friend; whilst Garrett is the kind of character you’d love to know in real life.

There are ‘dark pasts’ (of course, it’s New Adult) and there is drama, but unlike most New Adult books, The Deal handles them all in a much better way. For one, there’s no angst. As a rape survivor (not a spoiler, you’re told this from page one), Hannah has put it behind her and has moved on with her life; she doesn’t let the memories bog her down and stop her from living, which was incredibly refreshing. Hannah didn’t let anything hold her back, no matter how brutal it seemed. There are obstacles thrown in along the way, but the obstacles and drama are dealt with in such a light, humorous manner that the reader doesn’t feel suffocated by pity.

The secondary characters added another great element to the story, and the way Hannah and Garrett didn’t get all clingy with each other was a nice change. Instead, the reader sees each living their own lives and seeing each other whenever they have time, which made the relationship feel more realistic.

This was a light, fluffy read that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys plenty of humour, banter, and a relationship that will knock your socks off.

Category: Book Reviews, Other Reviews