Love Story by Jennifer Echols

Love Story by Jennifer Echols
"SHE’S WRITING ABOUT HIM. HE’S WRITING ABOUT HER. AND EVERYBODY IS READING BETWEEN THE LINES.

For Erin Blackwell, majoring in creative writing at the New York City college of her dreams is more than a chance to fulfill her ambitions—it’s her ticket away from the tragic memories that shadow her family’s racehorse farm in Kentucky. But when she refuses to major in business and take over the farm herself someday, her grandmother gives Erin’s college tuition and promised inheritance to their maddeningly handsome stable boy, Hunter Allen. Now Erin has to win an internship and work late nights at a local coffee shop to make her own dreams a reality. She should despise Hunter . . . so why does he sneak into her thoughts as the hero of her latest writing assignment?

Then, on the day she’s sharing that assignment with her class, Hunter walks in. He’s joining her class. And after he reads about himself in her story, her private fantasies about him must be painfully clear. She only hopes to persuade him not to reveal her secret to everyone else. But Hunter devises his own creative revenge, writing sexy stories that drive the whole class wild with curiosity and fill Erin’s heart with longing. Now she’s not just imagining what might have been. She’s writing a whole new ending for her romance with Hunter . . . except this story could come true."- summary from Amazon

I love Jennifer Echols and her books- they're just fantastic, and I imagine this was probably the one that was most difficult to write. I feel like in the hands of a lesser writer, this story would fall apart and the romance would be unbelievable and frustrating for the reader. Hunter does some things that could be unredeemable, but Echols does a good job of really getting into Hunter as well as Erin's pasts and giving valid reasons for why they're doing what they're doing. The reader has to be able to understand their motives and how they change over the course of the story. Taking the story at face-value wrecks the hard work Echols put into this story, so there has to be some thinking on the reader's part going on for the story to make sense and feel right.

Moving on, I really enjoyed the setting of college- more YA books need to take place there!! It's so much fun reading stories set there and including a creative writing class just made it even better. I loved reading the scenes in the classroom with the critiques though I was less enthused about the stories themselves- it took me a while to read Erin's story at the beginning.

Echols knows how to write a good romance and she's outdone herself here. The tension and interactions between Hunter and Erin were really fun to read. Hunter is a sexy man and even though the story is told from Erin's POV, I still got a really good idea of how Hunter grew up to be who he is now and how his mind worked. Her other characters are just as fun- my favorites were Summer and Brian (who, though he had a small amount of screentime, I kinda would like to date).

Overall, Echols has written a really well-crafted story. It's not my favorite of her MTV romances (Going Too Far still holds that title) but it's a very close second. Definitely a book to check out if you're looking for a beach read with a little more substance and three-dimensional, realistic, flawed characters that just jump off the page.

FTC: Received signed ARC from author. Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.