Shameless
Nina Lemay
Publication date: August 18th 2014
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
Synopsis:
~New Adult Contemporary Romance — recommended for mature readers~
Girls like me don’t get happy endings.
I know what I am. At worst a cliché, at best a cautionary tale. I put an international border between me and my past, only to wind up working in a low-end titty bar. Even my excuse is as lame as it gets: I’m paying for college, getting my art degree from Montreal’s most prestigious school. Although some days it becomes confusing: am I just a student who moonlights as a stripper, or a stripper who masquerades as a student?
But the inevitable happens and my two lives collide. And now there’s one other person who knows both the quiet, antisocial Hannah and the sensual, shameless Alicia. One person who keeps my secret.
He’s beautiful, he’s sophisticated. He comes from the other side of life, the one where I’m not wanted or accepted. But he calls me la petite Américaine, and his hot, hot hands on my skin promise me things I long ago gave up on.
The problem? He teaches my Classic Photography class.
This is a standalone novel, no series, no cliffhanger.
My
Rating:
Favorite
Quotes:
“He reaches out, slowly, carefully, as if afraid to scare
away a butterfly that alighted on his sleeve, and takes my hand.”
“Female friendship remains a strange and baffling thing to
me. I’m thinking I might give up on the
idea altogether.”
“I want to say me too.
I want to tell him about all the empty hours and the mental tricks to
think about something else. I want to
tell him about what I saw in those photos I gave him and ask if that really was
the way he saw me. But I was never very
good with forming feelings into words.
Maybe that’s why I always relied on shapes and colors.”
My
Review:
This book is emotionally tense, tightly wound, and well
written. I liked it, yet it annoyed me -
although I am not a big fan of angst. The tale is written in first person and
the main character, Hannah, was difficult for me to like, despite however much
I wanted to. Hannah is a bit odd and has
a somewhat toxic personality, and has become quite adept at keeping most people at
bay. The author teased me with interesting yet tiny
details about her characters, really just feeding me breadcrumbs… but she succeeds
in stringing me along and never really revealing the meatier entrée of the
backstory. I am greedy, I want the full
meal. I want to know that deep dark
secret that would ruin everything if it were exposed. She wouldn’t tell hers, he wouldn’t tell his,
they danced around each other with uncomfortable awkwardness when attempting to
open up to their issues, although they were obviously good together and had
fantastic steamy sex. Add in the
constraints of a forbidden relationship of teacher/student. He finally tells his history, but she never
really fessed up to the totality of her dark traumatic secret. It was like having an itch you can’t reach, I
find it rather maddening. Finally during
the final pages, we get a little taste of her prior events, but it was just a
glimmer, so I finished still feeling a bit itchy.
Empress
DJ
About the Author:
Nina Lemay is a YA writer by day and author of sinfully twisted New Adult…well, also by day. She loves all things dark and edgy and never tires of tormenting her characters. While Nina is a fan of all things scary, Gothic, and fantastic, she doesn’t shy away from a gritty contemporary romance when the muse strikes. She lives in Montreal, a city that never fails to inspire, with her partner and her dog.
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