[Review] True by Erin McCarthy

True
by Erin McCarthy
New Adult Contemporary Romance. 
Release Date: May 7th, 2013 from Intermix, Penguin Group USA



Premise

When Rory Macintosh’s roommates find out that their studious and shy friend has never been with a guy, they decide that, as an act of kindness they’ll help her lose her virginity by hiring confident, tattooed bad boy Tyler Mann to do the job…unbeknownst to Rory.

Tyler knows he’s not good enough for Rory. She’s smart, doctor smart, while he’s barely scraping by at his EMT program, hoping to pull his younger brothers out of the hell their druggy mother has left them in. But he can’t resist taking up her roommates on an opportunity to get to know her better. There’s something about her honesty that keeps him coming back when he knows he shouldn’t…

Torn between common sense and desire, the two find themselves caught up in a passionate relationship. But when Tyler’s broken family threatens to destroy his future, and hers, Rory will need to decide whether to cut her ties to his risky world or follow her heart, no matter what the cost…

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I received an e-copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

My thoughts

I liked this novel. 

I've been sitting here for half an hour trying to make up my mind about how I really feel about this book. For the most part, I couldn't tell if I was loving it or hating it because I was confused and my feelings were all over the place. One moment I was screaming at the book because I couldn't believe some of the decisions the characters were making and then I was crying and I couldn't even see the pages and a few minutes later I was grinning like a crazy person. So, yeah, it was a little bit hard to take a stand. But I've decided. I liked it. 

The story is told from Rory's point of view. She's a twenty-year-old virgin who has never been in a relationship, mostly because she's kind of awkward and doesn't really fit with the crowd. She's more comfortable with numbers and facts and logic and truly she doesn't get how the whole male-female interaction works, since she can not categorize it like everything in her life. She's also painfully honest and a complete geek which of course doesn't really help to her social life.

The story begins with Rory at a friend of a friend's house trying to make sense of this guy who's sitting next to her and contemplating the possibility of him being his boyfriend. But then, things get ugly really fast and the guy is all over her and she's helpless while her friends are somewhere around the house too busy to notice that she's about to get raped. Here's where Tyler -one of her friend's sex buddy- shows up and saves her. 

From an outsider point of view, Tyler seems to be the typical bad guy, covered in tattoos, smooking like a chimney and sleeping around. But if you get a little closer it becomes clear that he's much more than that. He's a fighter, who's trying really hard to become someone so he'll be able to provide a better future for his family, since his mother is a drug addict and he has two younger brothers to take care of. As the story goes on, you learn that he would do anything for the ones he cares about and that he truly has a golden heart. 

What frustrated me through the book and made me question whether I was liking it or not, was that Rory seemed to take everything so lightly, like when she found out that Tyler has been offered money to have sex with her, she never thought less of him or her friends and was mostly okay with it. That didn't compute with me, I'm not asking for drama queens but I don't think that's the normal reaction for the situation and it felt like it was the way it was for the sake of the story, because if she would have gone mad, like she should have, the love story was pointless. Besides, in the last quarter of the book, she's like a complete different person, like suddenly the voice of the story has been replaced. That was a bit confusing and it prevent me from fully loving the book.

The thing is, even when I had some issues with the characters and reactions, I was truly engaged to the story. I couldn't put the book down and it was an intense experience, because I went from being mad at the inconsistencies to feel completely emotional and feeling the hurt and the love through the pages. It made me laugh and cry and, well, if a book can do that to you it couldn't have been all that bad. So that's why I like it, because even when it was not perfect, it made me feel part of the story.

Overall, True is a nice, somewhat-heart-warming story of two people so different you would never think they could fall for each other, but against all the odds, they do and that's the best that has ever happened to them. This relationship wasn't perfect by any means, they had disagreements, they had different backgrounds and sometimes had a hard time understanding each other, they could be childish and drive each other crazy, but you can feel through the pages how much they mean to each other and that was cool.

Due to the explicit content, I recommend this book to a +18 audience.

Rating

About the author

Erin McCarthy is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 40 novels and novellas in the paranormal, contemporary romance, and young adult genres. The author is a RITA award finalist and an American Library Association winner of the Reluctant Young Reader award. She lives in Ohio. 

And here are a few places you can hang out with her!

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