Dirty English by Ilsa Madden-Mills

Synopsis:
A scarred fighter.
A girl with rules.
One night of unbridled passion.

There are three things you need to know about Elizabeth Bennett: she’s smart as a whip, always in control, and lives by a set of carefully crafted rules. She’s learned the hard way that people you love the most always hurt you in the end.

But then she meets Declan Blay, the new neighbor at her apartment complex.

A tattooed British street fighter, he’s the campus bad boy she’s supposed to avoid, but when he saves her from a frat party gone bad, all her rules about sex and love fly out the window.

She gives him one night of unbridled passion, but he longs for more.

With only a cardboard-thin wall separating their bedrooms, he dreams of possessing the vulnerable girl next door forever.

One night. Two damaged hearts. The passion of a lifetime.

*a modern love story inspired by Pride and Prejudice*

Find it on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25560618-dirty-english
Order it on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1MIAyZA

My Review:
3 stars — *sigh*  It was only meh for me.  Not sure if this is a book slump thing, or just one of those times where a book doesn’t mesh with you.  I’ll list my reasons for meh, but take them with a grain of salt — not sure if my mood is influencing my reading at this point.

I felt like the pacing of the writing wasn’t smooth.  Course, I know nothing about writing, I just know how I feel when I’m reading, and this felt sometimes fast for me…or something.  It could be I’m wrong on that, and it’s just that I wasn’t interested in what I was reading, so it didn’t flow for me, but again…not sure.

I wasn’t invested in the characters.  There was nothing strikingly bad or annoying about them, I just never made a connection with them.  I definitely felt more for Declan than Elizabeth, he had some sweet moments….but they were tempered with the, I guess, Alpha part of his personality?  And maybe I’m just not that much of an Alpha girl.  I preferred his sweet, romantic moments.  Maybe it’s that the two sides didn’t always jive for me…they would occasionally, and I could picture him, but then at other times I just lost something.  And Elizabeth was a puzzle to me.  I know that victims recover in different ways, and there is no right way…but I guess I just had a hard time with the consistency of her behavior.  Sometimes she was scared and other times…well maybe I was just supposed to feel that connection with Declan and that’s why she felt safe with him, but for some reason I didn’t feel it.  Again, could be my mood.

I really did enjoy some of the moments in this book (dancing in the rain, when he talked about her scars, Dax).  But something was just…off…  I seem to be in the minority though, so I’ll just chalk it up to “one of those times it just doesn’t work” and leave it at that.