Review: Relatively Honest

"Eighteen year-old womanizer Daniel Revelstoke leaves his native London to study at the University of Oregon, dreaming of seducing one American girl after another. But he soon meets a new kind of woman in classmate Julie French. Her cleverness and resistance land Daniel in love for the first time in his life, to his deep confusion.  

 However, Julie's long-distance boyfriend and a bizarre family secret stand in Daniel's way to winning her. Since he can't quit obsessing over her, he decides to hide a few truths in order to draw closer to her, hoping that maybe she'll return his love and, when she finds out his devious path, forgive him. It's a gamble, but all's fair in love and college."

- http://www.mollyringle.com/relativelyhonest.html

Stats:

• Format: ebook

• Publisher:  ireadiwrite Publishing

• Release Date: September 11, 2011

• File Size: 876 KB

Favorite Quotes:

“And while ordinarily I didn’t mind lying to help spread the rumor that I was charming, today my mind was short-circuiting.”

“20,000 students attended the University of Oregon at any given time. About 10,700 of them were female. Already good: more women than men, which meant a bigger pool for me, and less competition. Assuming as many as half were totally undesirable (which seemed a high number), that still left 5,350 potential dates for me. Assuming that of those, another half wouldn’t have me due to reasons like having a boyfriend, being a lesbian, or planning to become a nun, I was still left with 2,675 possibilities.”

“JET LAG is a right bitch.”

Random things that I liked: 

The chapters weren’t very long and made for a quick read.  I also like the titles of the chapters; they were clear-cut and told you exactly what was going to go on.

Review:

Relatively Honest was a much more fun read than I was expecting.  It sounded like an interesting story but I assumed it would be more of a mopey, dramatic type of read.  The story is told from the viewpoint of the main character, Daniel, and highlights his thoughts and reactions to others.  Although I cannot know for sure, I felt that the author did a good job of capturing how an 18 year old man-boy would think and respond to situations.  The writing is pretty clever and the character is actually funny.

Daniel was born and bred in England and has always had an affinity for American girls.  He is the typical charmer with a great accent that draws the opposite sex in.  His description automatically had me picturing Robert Pattinson- so Twilight fans you’ll love that!  Because girls have always thrown themselves at him, Daniel has never put much thought into how he treats girls and has certainly never had the desire to stay with any of them for too long.

Although Daniel is a womanizer and has treated girls wrongly in the past, he is determined to turn that around with Julie.  From the beginning Daniel’s interest in her makes him realize how his previous girlfriends felt about him and causes a change of heart.

Daniel is attending the University of Oregon and is roomed with a goth named Sinter.  He was a good addition and was more likable than other typical “goth” characters seem to be.  Sinter challenge Daniel’s behavior at times but is overall a good friend.  He has his own issues that he is dealing with but it didn’t detract from the main storyline.

I do not want to give away the big twist in the story, but I will say that I did not like it.  It touches on a taboo subject and automatically put me off.  Honestly, I was tempted to stop reading.  I am not one to give up on a book, so I pushed forward and was glad I did.  The author managed to grasp my attention again made the twist work.  Don’t give up- keep reading!

Overall I thought that this was a fun read.  It has a little bit of everything- love, lies, secrets, friendship, and humor (the most important ingredient in my book!).