Style by Chelsea M. Cameron

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Title: Style
Author: Chelsea M. Cameron
Series: The OTP Series #1
Published by: Indie
Release Date: May 31, 2016
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 242
Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary, LGBT, Romance
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2018 #LetsReadIndie Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 Beat the Backlist Challenge, Lenoreo's 2018 Platypire Diversity Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER Big Summer Birthday Bash 2018
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ IndieBound
My rating:

Blurb:

Kyle Blake likes plans. So far, they’re pretty simple: Finish her senior year of high school, head off to a good college, find a cute boyfriend, graduate, get a good job, get married, the whole heterosexual shebang. Nothing is going to stand in the way of that plan. Not even Stella Lewis.

Stella Lewis also has a plan: Finish her senior year as cheer captain, go to college, finally let herself flirt with (and maybe even date) a girl for the first time and go from there.

Fate has other plans for Kyle and Stella when they’re paired up in their AP English class and something between them ignites. It’s confusing and overwhelming and neither of them know what to do about it. One thing they do know is that their connection can’t be ignored. The timing just isn’t right.

But is there ever a good time for falling in love?

My Review:

3 stars — This one had potential, and I was excited to read another F/F, but unfortunately it fell flat.  The storyline was actually kind of boring, there was barely any conflict.  I mean, I don’t mind lots of happy times, but there has to be something driving the story.

The editing was HORRIBLE.  And this is coming from someone who forgives a lot when it comes to editing, b/c I know it can be expensive, and nobody catches everything.  BUT, in addition to the typos and other grammar problems, the author completely botched the whole dialogue thing, so most of the time you really had to sort through it to figure out who was speaking, and even then it was hard to tell.  Basically she would have actions of the other character in the same paragraph of the current speaker, and so it was impossible to follow who was speaking and when it changed.  When it’s a challenge to read, then it needs to be (re)edited.  There were also loose story threads (graphic design, book blogging?) and continuity issues (Stella’s last name changed, was Davies at one point).

The voices of our two main characters were remarkably similar for two girls who really weren’t that similar at all.  Both characters also felt kind of two dimensional…there was an attempt at depth, but it just didn’t feel like quite enough for me.  I thought both Stella and Kyle were all right, but I never really fell in love with either of them, or developed a strong connection.  The reason for Stella’s meanness was not bad, but I felt like I wanted more…especially with the way she would constantly push Kyle away.

The romance was pretty good…I did feel a connection between the two.  I feel like I should note that the steamy parts went a bit more explicit than I was anticipating for YA — so I would categorize this as mature YA.

It was nice to have a book where the girls got a good coming out experience, but it was so unremarkable it began to feel unrealistic.  Particularly with Kyle…if Kyle didn’t know about herself, how did her BFF Grace know?  Honestly, I was a bit bummed that bisexuality was completely glossed over in this story.  I actually thought for sure Kyle was going to be bi since it felt like at the beginning of the story she eluded to attraction to boys.  Honestly, it’s not that big a deal, I’m sure this is a valid progression for many homosexuals, it just felt like a missed opportunity (especially when I keep reading about the problem of bi-erasure).

This is all feeling like a very negative review, but honestly it wasn’t that.  I think I was just disappointed.  It was a very fluffy story, with lots of cute moments, and happiness, and lovey stuff…which is not bad, but just could have used a plot arc.  Hence the 3 stars.  Not a bad book, just somewhat unremarkable for me.