Book Review: Left Drowning by Jessica Park

Weighted down by the loss of her parents, Blythe McGuire struggles to keep her head above water as she trudges through her last year at Matthews College. Then a chance meeting sends Blythe crashing into something she doesn’t expect—an undeniable attraction to a dark-haired senior named Chris Shepherd, whose past may be even more complicated than her own. As their relationship deepens, Chris pulls Blythe out of the stupor she’s been in since the night a fire took half her family. She begins to heal, and even, haltingly, to love this guy who helps her find new paths to pleasure and self-discovery. But as Blythe moves into calmer waters, she realizes Chris is the one still strangled by his family’s traumatic history. As dark currents threaten to pull him under, Blythe may be the only person who can keep him from drowning.

*This book is intended for mature audiences due to strong language and sexual content. Note: due to mature content recommended for Ages 17+

First of all, this book is a lot of smut-which I didn't really expect by the description.  Not that I necessarily have a problem with smut, but honestly the main driving factor of this book seemed to be the erotic descriptions both in interactions alone with herself and with the main male lead.  It didn't really seem to be that the book was one about their emotional baggage and healing with some sex thrown in, but more about all the sex and then the past wounds and interactions that seemed to be side-thoughts to the driving factor-which was sex.  So if you go in with that understanding, maybe it won't be so shocking for you.

Also, sometimes the sex scenes would be kind of enthralling and then they'd say something totally bizarre that pulled me entire out of it, so I wasn't very keen on this author's writing style as she just lost me about half way through some of them.  I listened to the audio book, but I'm thinking this one would have been better to read rather than listen to, as then I could have put it in my own voice and maybe not been so... Weirded out?  Yeah, I was weirded out a couple of times.

Also, it was pretty predictable.  I guessed every single plot twist before it happened, this is normal for me, but this time it just seemed too easy to guess where they the connections and turns would happen.  So this book gets three stars, the third one just because there were some great quotes that I related to or loved.  There was also some good to it, so it did have some redeemable qualities.

Rating: ★★★★★