Warning: This book includes mature content such as: sexual content, and/or drug and/or alcohol use, and/or violence.
Only For You by Beverley Kendall Series: Unforgettable You #1
Published by Season Publishing on 30 December 2012
Genres: New Adult
Pages: 270
Source: Netgalley
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Olivia has been secretly in love with Zach all through high-school, even if he never addressed her and hardly even looked at her. Throughout high-school, Olivia had to deal with mean rumors and other students not caring who they hurt in their quest for more popularity.
When Olivia leaves for college, she's happy she'll be away from it all, from them all, to start over in a place where noone knows her apart from her best friend, April, who is also her roommate. Things don't really go as planned, though.
*I received a free ARC of Only For You from Season Publishing via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review*
Only For You is a typical romance, with complications that don’t really have anything to do with the main characters. Olivia is a beautiful young woman, used to having boys chasing after her – all the boys apart from the one she wants. Zach has something against Olivia, but what, she has no idea, as they have never really spoken to each other. On the first day of college, Olivia is in French class, chatting with her best friend April when none other than Zach strolls into class. Avoidance really isn’t an option, as they both see each other at the same time.
As Only For You progresses, both Zach and Olivia show their friends that they have strong feelings for each other, but they don’t seem to want to act on those feelings at all. Zach has just left a very complicated relationship behind, even if the relationship doesn’t seem to have left him. Zach is also having issues with his dad, who has been doing his best to make sure Zach will be an NHL star like his older brother. When Zach rebels by going to Paris instead of meeting with more scouts during fall break, things are not so good.
The writing is OK, I must say I was a little disappointed with the French that was included, there were only two small phrases, and both were incorrect. Google translator is not your friend at all times, and when those mistakes are supposedly coming from a French teacher whose mother-tongue is French, it just makes it all that harder to suspend disbelief.
Also, apparently, Olivia is a child actress, she tells us so several times, and often, she says to herself something like ‘as good as my acting skills are, I don’t seem to be able to fake things all that well’. However, even when Olivia is in the school play, the readers aren’t really shown how her acting is – we only know what Olivia tells us. And the fact that she seems to have to tell the readers – and herself – how good an actress she is several times makes it all seem pretty fake, and as if Olivia really isn’t sure of her skills at all.
I had a little trouble with how fast things went between Zach and Olivia as well, I know they had been attracted to each other for years, but they really didn’t know each other, and since Olivia was very inexperienced it seemed a little out of character for her to act the way she did. Also, a lot of the drama seemed to be just added on to make sure the road to happiness wasn’t too easy. If you want to read something quick and easy, and you don’t mind things happening very fast, you’d enjoy Only For You. The easy banter between the girls was enjoyable, and I will still read All Over You.
How? By fooling myself into believing hat what I felt for him was something between antipathy and indifference.
But as usual, life has other plans for me. Filing Zach away is going to be anything but easy. Life, as I’m learning, likes to ‘eff’ with me. And today, I’m not finding the joke it’s playing funny.
“Bonjour monsieurs et mademoiselles. Pleez pardon my tardiness.” <- This should have been Bonjour Mesdemoiselles et Messieurs. Just as in English, ladies first, then gentlemen…
I’d quietly thanked him and he’d politely replied. That’s the closest we’ve ever gotten to a torrid love affair.
The five of us, me, Olivia, Mike, Rebecca and Bill grab a table together for lunch, and when Olivia and Rebecca go off to the restroom – or la toilette – as they say in France – […] No, actually ‘they’ say les toilettes in France
“I’m fine.” I don’t mean to sound so clipped in my reply but as good as my acting skills are, I don’t seem to be able to fake things all that well when it comes to Zach.
About Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms
Linda is an English as foreign language teacher and has a Master's degree in English Language and Literature. She's an avid reader, blogger, compulsive one-clicker and a genre omnivore. Ever since she learnt how to read she has been seen with a book or two in her hands everywhere she goes.
I’m sorry this one didn’t work out so well for you, Lexxie. It seemed to have potential but apparently didn’t fulfill it. That’s always disappointing. And the French…that’s terrible. I hope your next read is amazing! 🙂
Thanks Brandee 🙂 I think I was doubly disappointed because I usually love this author 🙁
I’m sorry this one didn’t work out so well for you, Lexxie. It seemed to have potential but apparently didn’t fulfill it. That’s always disappointing. And the French…that’s terrible. I hope your next read is amazing! 🙂
Great review Lexie but I’m sorry that this book didn’t worked out for you.
Ok, I actually hate when in books is clearly that they used Google translate! Is it that hard to ask someone that know the language? To me, is just seems, that the author don’t give a damn, if it’s accurate or not, not realizing they may have readers that know that language.
I agree – asking someone who knows the langauge, especially for two tiny sentences like that shouldn’t be too hard. And now, we can all get books within seconds thanks to e-books, so people all over the world are reading (hopefully) an author’s books. Oh well.
Thanks for stopping by Joana 🙂
“google translator is not your friend.” LOL, can you tell that to my lazy kid?! She won’t listen to me . . .
I’m sorry this one didn’t work for you. It doesn’t sound like it would work for me either.
Gimme your kid’s e-mail address, and I’ll write her a note in French and see if she can figure it out 😉
We had a lot of fun with Google translator at work once – we wrote a sentence in French, asked it to translate that sentence to Norwegian. Then, we used the Norwegian sentence, got it translated to English. After that, we took the English sentence and translated that back to French. Needless to say, the first and the last sentence didn’t have many words in common 😉
I’m sorry it wasn’t for you darling, I don”t know if I would have chosen it with this cover…
I usually like this author, and I don’t pay that much attention to covers… Oh well 🙂
Thanks for stopping by Melliane.
Twitter: bmreviewsohmy
Don’t use a language if you don’t know it..ugh. Sorry this one turned out to be a bummer. Great review!
Thank you Stormi 🙂 It’s never fun to write a review of a book I didn’t enjoy – especially because I’m pretty sure other readers love it!
Happy reading 🙂
So sorry this one was a disappointment. The French thing was funny though in a bad way. We have to translate things into Spanish all the time at my work and I’ve seen how Google translator demolishes the words vs. having someone that actually speaks Spanish do the work. I hope you have a much better read next time. Jaclyn @ JC’s Book Haven.
Oh well, it is bound to happen some time, right? I can’t fall in love with all the books; although that would be awesome.
I have to LOL when I see your comment love thing, because BRAAAIIIINNNSSS 😀
Thanks for stopping by Jaclyn 🙂
Aww, too bad this was such a disappointing read! Great review though-very thorough! I appreciate your honesty 🙂
Thank you Lindy 🙂