July 29, 2013

NEW ADULT MONDAY: Frigid

 

The New Adult genre - their bad boys and big problems and epic loves make them engrossing tales that are so easy to lose yourself in. What's not to love about that? And, now, thanks to the cool chicks at Bewitched Bookworms, we can show these books the love they deserve in a weekly feature - New Adult Mondays.

Frigid, J. Lynn
Published July 15, 2013
Publisher:  Spencer Hill Contemporary
Format: ARC - obtained from BEA
Genre:  new adult contemporary romance
To Buy:  Amazon * Barnes & Noble

Rating:  4 STARS

(From Goodreads) For twenty-one-year-old Sydney, being in love with Kyler isn't anything new. They'd been best friends ever since he pushed her down on the playground and she made him eat a mud pie. Somewhere over the years, she fell for him and fell hard. The big problem with that? Kyler puts the 'man' in man-whore. He's never stayed with a girl longer than a few nights, and with it being their last year in college, Syd doesn't want to risk their friendship by declaring her love.

Kyler has always put Syd on a pedestal that was too high for him to reach. To him, she's perfect and she's everything. But the feelings he has for her, he's always hidden away or focused on any other female. After all, Kyler will always be the poor boy from the wrong side of tracks, and Syd will always be the one girl he can never have.

But when they're stranded together at a posh ski resort due to a massive Nor'easter, there's nothing stopping their red-hot feelings for each other from coming to the surface. Can their friendship survive the attraction? Better yet, can they survive at all? Because as the snow falls, someone is stalking them, and this ski trip may be a life-changer in more ways than one.


I received my ARC copy of Frigid on Day 2 at BEA. With all the books I gathered on the first two days, this one was the one I chose to start reading first. I read a few pages that night (before I passed out from exhaustion), and then another 50 pages or so on Day 3 as I waited in lines. It was definitely one of my most anticipated BEA books. 

The great thing about Frigid is that it turned out to be an a-typical new adult book, wrapped in a typical new adult package. On the surface, it's something we've all seen before. Boy and girl have been friends since they were kids, and secretly in love with each other for the most recent few years. Boy deals by screwing lots of faceless girls. Girl deals by shutting herself off from all other guys. Until the fateful day that they are trapped together in a ski lodge. Alone. And all the secrets come out.

Sounds like a new adult book, right? The only thing missing is some horribly tragic event in either the boy's or the girl's (or both) lives. Well, you'll have to keep looking, because it's not there. And, my GOODNESS, is that like a breath of fresh air. There's nothing dark or seedy in either Kyler's or Sydney's past. They simply like each other because... well, because they do. Because they were BFFs first and through hanging out and going to school together, they saw things in each other that they related to and decided they liked more than friends would. It just so happens that they're both big chickens and couldn't tell the other how they felt.

So, Frigid has no horrible event that might cause the reader to bawl through half of it. But, what it does have is a cool mystery. Crazy, right? As time goes on, it seems as if someone(s) is trying to hurt Kyler or Sydney or both of them. If being shut up together in a ski lodge during a blizzard wasn't enough to bring two people with some crazy sexual tension between them together, then being shut up together during a blizzard with someone trying to hurt them definitely would.

I really loved both Kyler and Sydney. They weren't overly sappy. There wasn't some crazy insta-love. They were both strong and weak in different ways. The story developed at a nice pace, and, despite it being a relatively short book, it didn't really seem like it. I really loved this one.

This was a really great one by J. Lynn. It was a really great book, period. If you've been in a new adult slump lately and want something a little different, give Frigid a try.
 

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