Jase by M.J. Fields
Series: Men of Steel #1
Publication date: July 13th, 2013
Pages:
Synopsis (according to Goodreads):
I sat in my room at our family's tattoo parlor, Forever Steel staring at the phone. I hadn't stopped looking at the picture of this crazy, quirky, insanely beautiful blonde haired, blue eyed siren that invaded the Jersey Shore a month ago.
Carly Smythe was not my type at all. She was a twenty year old student at Stanford University in California, smart as hell, and funny. The shit kicker was she was so awkwardly unaware of what any man with pulse could see, and that was that she was a damn heartbreaker with a body that made me hard the very first time I saw her.
She made me crazy, she snuck out to see me, and then avoided any sexual advances I made on her, until I finally kissed her, and I didn't wait for an invitation either: I took those pouty little lips and made them mine.
Carly was also an avid reader of those books, you know "Mommy Porn." So my game had to be stepped up. Who the hell am I kidding? She could see through my game immediately, and it didn't have the same effect it did on every other girl I hooked up with. And she didn't go running for the hills, either. I fell hard... and fast.
Abe (her cousin) knew all the shit that had gone down in my life for the past five and a half years and in order to make this work, which I wanted it to... I needed to set the record straight, put it all on the line, give her the 411, and let her decide if after everything, she still wanted to give it up to a guy like me. A tattooed, pierced, f-up, with a past that was sure to send any girl into a tail spin. She was not any girl, she was... different.
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Review:
I received an e-copy of this book from publishers in exchange for an honest review.
What immediately drew me to this book was the cover. The bright blue text with a sexy tattooed man on the front. I had just fallen into a book hangover from the Marked Men series written by Jay Crownover and was looking for another new adult series that was reminiscent of the books that had stolen my heart. I figured I would give Jase a try. That coupled with the fact that I got to experience a new author for the first time. Always a bonus in my book.
Jase opens with Carly, a nineteen-year-old college student who is visiting her father over summer break in New Jersey. While bumming around town with her cousin, Abe, she gets dragged to a couple beach parties. There she meets a dimpled sex god of a man, Jase. Despite her better judgment Carly starts hanging out with Jase. As she gets to know more and more about him she starts to develop feelings for him without even realizing it as first. It is only after Jase gets wind that Carly is turning their fun "fake dates" into possibly more in her mind, that he tries to sever ties. Not long after that, he realizes what a stupid mistake that is and runs back to Carly Carly tries to resist, knowing that she is going back to college and her mother soon. She knows having a long distance relationship of any kind with a playboy like Jase Steel is nothing but a pipe dream. Irregardless, she can't seem to keep distance between her and the illustrious Jase.
So starts a whirlwind romance that features a damaged boy just looking to no longer be deemed the loser of Jersey Shore and a naive girl who has no clue what love and heartache are until she is beaten over the head with them.
This book was kind of all over the place. The writing was almost immature at times (what with the use of "who-who" in the place of other, more well used terms for female genitalia), but after completing the book, I realized that was just Fields's way of emphasizing the innocence of Carly. It was a little hard to get through the first little bit of the book because Carly was almost child-like in a lot of her mannerisms. It made the sexual tension a bit uncomfortable.
This is not to say that there were not redeeming qualities of the book. I did like the switching perspectives. Often stories are a bit one-sided, especially when written in first person narrative. Both characters were pretty introverted about certain situations so it was nice to gain a little insight each way. Unfortunately, that is probably the only thing I liked about the book sad as it is to say.
Really this book was just not my cup of tea. I can see where the author was going with certain aspects of her writing, but I just couldn't find any sort of connection with the characters. I didn't feel drawn into the story and when that happens it makes reading become more of a chore. I really wanted to like the book but sadly it was a swing and a miss for me personally.
