This One’s For You (Brandy Jellum)

All alone in a new state, Brennan Daniels has only the memories of her best friend, Reagan, to keep her company as she starts college.

Reagan is the reason for everything Brennan does—before she died, she made Brennan promise to stay good until she found a man worth keeping. No boys, no dating, and definitely no falling in love — those were the rules for college, and Brennan carved them into the brick walls guarding her heart…

But there’s a fire burning behind those walls, and when Brennan meets Owen Scott, the (mysterious) new guy across the hall, she can’t deny the pull between them. He is everything she should never want. Everyone warns her to stay away — even Owen himself — but the heart wants what the heart wants, even if it knows that it’s going to get hurt — even if it means throwing old promises to new flames…

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I had such high hopes for this book, I really did, but it felt flat… 😦 .The concept is really good and this is something that I really liked, the fact that our main character is dealing – though not very well – with the death of a person that meant more to her than anything else. I really appreciated how the book doesn’t gloss over the hard stuff, and reading about Brennan’s panic attacks and hesitations broke my heart.

The writing was ok, but this book ran too long. In all honesty it needed a good trim, because it was way too repetitive. Other thing that bothered me a bit was the typos, the missing words and the wrong verbal tenses in some places. It’s something that I can overlook in ARCs quite often, if the writing is pulling me enough into the book, but that just wasn’t the case here :(.

Another negative for me ended up being some of the characters. Actually, I didn’t love either one of them, except for maybe Brenn’s brothers. Brennan herself was an OK MC, but she got under my skin. I understood her mood swings, given that it was part of her inability to deal with her trauma, but I couldn’t relate to her. Also, her clinging to that promise annoyed me to no end, maybe because I felt that the promise itself was a bit of nonsense.

Surprisingly I kind of liked Owen, though he was a bit hot and cold too. I did understand his reticence at first, and I loved reading about his fears of giving in to the relationship, what I didn’t quite get was his actions towards the end of the book… moving on…

I just want to say something, because I’m kind of sick of reading this in books. Why is it that guys who are casual about sex are viewed as douchebags in books? I don’t get it! What is so wrong with that behaviour, if they’re not hurting anyone in the process or making false promises? 

I need to talk about Amelia (Brenn’s roommate), because seriously, what even?! I liked her at the beginning, but then, oh boy, no no no. First she – pardon my french – cockblocks Brenn and Owen like 100 times! WTF girl?! WHY? Then, after giving Brenn grief for not opening up, she decides to lie to her friend for THE WHOLE TIME THEY KNOW EACH OTHER! And why, you may ask? Well, that’s a good question, because I reached the freaking end of the book and I still don’t have any idea as to why. Worse! Everyone else knew! This is also true about Owen’s past, everyone surrounding Brenn knows all about his past, except for her. And I mean EVERYONE, including at least one of her brothers. I mean, come on people… really?

The romance itself was part of the redeeming qualities of the book, when Brennan was not freaking out over not keeping her promise to her dead BFF, she and Owen were happy and beyond cute together. Also, he said the most romantic stuff… I enjoyed those parts.

One thing that really put a damp on my enjoyment of this book was how judgmental Brennan came of at the beginning of this book. Slut shaming is never ok. And not only does she do it, but she also says not very nice things about people who decide to engage in threesomes. I mean, it’s a personal thing, but calling the girls who are into it “sluts” and saying that the guy who does it clearly has no respect for women… I mean… why? What? Why?

I’m rambling now. Ultimately I think this book needed seriously editing. It’s way to extensive and the pace is way too slow at times. The characters show some growth, but that doesn’t make them that more appealing. Some situations are quite bad, and I felt that most didn’t have a proper resolution.