Review: The Love Interest by Cale Dietrich
10:00
Series: None
Author: Cale Dietrich
Published May 16th 2017 by Feiwel & Friends
Goodreads Synopsis
There is a secret organization that cultivates teenage spies. The agents are called Love Interests because getting close to people destined for great power means getting valuable secrets.
Caden is a Nice: the boy next door, sculpted to physical perfection. Dylan is a Bad: the brooding, dark-souled guy who is dangerously handsome. The girl they are competing for is important to the organization, and each boy will pursue her. Will she choose the Nice or the Bad?
Both Caden and Dylan are living in the outside world for the first time. They are well-trained and at the top of their games. They have to be—whoever the girl doesn’t choose will die.
What the boys don’t expect are feelings that are outside of their training. Feelings that could kill them both.
Goodreads
Review
Well, this is another book that I've been putting off reviewing just because I didn't know how to put in words just how I felt about it. I wanted to love the book, I really did, but it just fell way below my expectations.
In The Love Interest, there is a secret organisation that creates 'love interests' for getting close to important people, and being able to control what happens in the world. Once a person is deemed to be 'important', two types of person is created/cultivated for each target. You have a Nice and a Bad, one to be the boy next door, and the other to be brooding, more dangerous type. Their mission is to make the target choose them - whichever one wins, gets to survive; the other, well, not so lucky. In this case, Juliet is our target, and Caden (Nice) and Dylan (Bad) have been created in order to appeal to her and make her fall for them. Juliet is someone who is super clever and creative, and targeted to be super important one day. She meets the two love interests, and feels chemistry with them, but something is missing - however, she soon realises that the issue is that both Caden and Dylan are actually falling for each other, and she tries to help them.
I wanted to love this book, especially when I heard the synopsis, and then the spoilers that the two love interests start to fall for each other. The issue is, though, that we get our story all from Caden's point of view, and he is one of the most boring and one dimensional characters I have ever read before. I found myself skimming the book more than reading, and trying to just pick out the dialogue, because his thoughts bored me. Also, the other characters didn't have much more clout about them. They all read as one dimensional, and though Dylan was slightly better, that doesn't mean to say he was any good.
Considering that Caden and Dylan were created to be 'love interests', they had no charisma or chemistry with either Juliet - their target - or with each other. Caden supposedly falling for Dylan, and Dylan slowly returning them, seems so forced, that I just couldn't believe it.
The plot of this book, well, there wasn't exactly one. The premise was there - get Juliet to fall for you, fall instead for each other, escape the control of the Love Interest Compound (LIC), and live happily ever after). Yeah, that's all well and good, but that doesn't happen. The writing is more tell, not show - everything is forced. I can't recommend this book to anyone, and, being honest, as soon as I was finished with the book, I got rid of it. I felt like I'd wasted money on the book, and just wanted it out of the house as soon as possible. Writing this review has made me realise my rating is more of 1.5-2 star, than 3 stars, and that's being kind.
Dates Read:
February 11-16, 2017Rating
2 Stars
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