Nerdy Boy

Great characterization of an emotional high school romance. A lot of turmoil between these characters as they have a history that makes them enemies with a fierce attraction. Enjoyed how this all came out in the end as they have a solid relationship together.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

If you just want instant three-way smut barely held up by an almost non-existent plot and told in a very young-adult or even young-teen way (which is fitting as the characters are all teen-ish), you’ll enjoy this. It’s cute but there’s not a whole lot of depth, and half the time it’s hard to take seriously because everything is overly simplified; something I would’ve expected from an erotica perhaps—which is what this feels like more—and not really a romance, because while there is romance (a very young teenager kind), the focus is really more on the sex and just fulfilling the throuple aspect.

I liked Spencer at first—which is the POV we start the story in, and I also liked Ezra but then the POVs got split between the three leads unevenly, favouring Logan the most, which threw me off (because it felt like Ezra and Spencer were relegated to just side characters), and Spencer’s own romance has hardly even started, much less had time to develop when we get shoved the Ezra and Logan angle and the focus stays on that, so yeah, it kind of felt like the whole story was just in a hurry to make them a threesome already. Then when Shelby started devolving into yet another stereotypical girl-bossy, in-your-face, and abusive “gay-guy female bestie” cliché, I lost whatever tepid enjoyment I was getting out of this, because I’m just so tired of this whole “girl bestie very obviously steering the plot to where the writer wants it to go” ploy that gets used over and over ad nauseam in almost every single MM romance story I read. Like, I swear I am getting gay-guy girl bestie fatigue at this point; don’t female besties have any other personalities, seriously? (And why is Shelby allowed to get physically aggressive with Spencer? Just because she’s a girl and he’s a guy? Flip the genders here and feminists would be frothing at the mouth if a guy bestie so much as put his hands on his girl bestie, much less actually get physically violent. So, no. That was definitely a turn off that decked a star or two from what would have been my originally intended rating.) DNF’d at 50%.