Romance Readers Reading Challenges discussion

Kristin and I will be reading Real around the middle of the month! The more the merrier :)

I'm hoping to start this one tonight!

Great! I just picked up my book so I'll be starting it soon!

I started this morning and am a little past the halfway mark. It was kind of slow start (Brooke had me rolling my eyes quite a bit) but it's getting better and better as the story goes on.

Wow what great timing, I'm at almost exactly halfway through and picked it up this morning as well. :)

The book started off so unrealistic to me—he finds her in a crowd and is immediately intrigued. I'm hoping there is more of a backstory story there from him but don't really have high hopes that its anything more than just an "insta-love" meeting. I agree, its getting better as the story goes on but so far I'm not seeing what all the hype is about on this one...

No... I finished it and I'm not sure of my rating. I'm hovering between 2 & 3 stars. On one hand, I finished it in a day... but it once it got more into the manic depression (like right after I posted here) I just had to roll my eyes. Going black? Huh? Can't you just says he's manic. And I'm pretty sure people's eyes don't change color during episodes. I'm not familiar with the disorder, but I'll make an educated guess that ones eyes don't magically change. It almost read like a PNR to me. He gets 'speedy', goes 'black' with eye color changing, and needs sex to gain control. Like a shifter or something. Plus all the 'mine' stuff... I think this would have worked well if he were a wolf, lol.

But the sex was smoking hot. Like, whoa.

ALSO! The whole thing with the little sis. Ugh. So predictable! I saw it coming a mile away.

I totally agree with your assessment. I ended up giving this book between 3-4 stars because I'm a sucker for happy endings and books that I can't put down but this one had some major issues for me.

I absolutely HATE how so many books portray mental illness. I actually work at a nonprofit for mental health and so this always hits close to home for me. The speedy, eye-changing, irrational violence, treatment via tranquilizing...etc was overall too much for me. It seems that too many characters with mental illness are portrayed as unstable and violent which just perpetrates the stigma and really irks me. Sorry for the rant, I guess its good that this one kept my interest because I also finished it in a day despite rolling my eyes through a lot too :)

Haha I never thought of it as a PNR but I could totally see that! It would have been better to me if he was a wolf rather than just diagnosed bipolar. And the whole thing with her little sister was way to predictable, when she came up with that scheme (which really didn't accomplish anything) I could see it ending poorly.

Overall, I was entertained (and often annoyed). Do you think your going to pick up the next one in the series or the one from his POV?

Kristin wrote: "I totally agree with your assessment. I ended up giving this book between 3-4 stars because I'm a sucker for happy endings and books that I can't put down but this one had some major issues for me..."

The tranquilizing was ridiculous and there's no excuse for it. It's not like we don't live in the age of endless information. Duh. Look on WebMD, at the very least, FFS.

I don't know if I'll read book 2. If it were about another couple in the series, I might. But these two together are so far fetched... we'll see.

I agree, I'll probably add book 2 to my (seemingly) endless TBR list but won't be chomping at the bit to pick it up.

But I did grab Blue-Eyed Devil after your rec to read Sugar Daddy (which I loved, thanks again!) so if you are thinking of picking that one up anytime soon I would love to buddy read :)