Ratings9
Average rating3.1
Twenty-year-old Camryn Bennett had always been one to think out-of-the-box, who knew she wanted something more in life than following the same repetitive patterns and growing old with the same repetitive life story. And she thought that her life was going in the right direction until everything fell apart.
Determined not to dwell on the negative and push forward, Camryn is set to move in with her best friend and plans to start a new job. But after an unexpected night at the hottest club in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, she makes the ultimate decision to leave the only life she’s ever known, far behind.
With a purse, a cell phone and a small bag with a few necessities, Camryn, with absolutely no direction or purpose boards a Greyhound bus alone and sets out to find herself. What she finds is a guy named Andrew Parrish, someone not so very different from her and who harbors his own dark secrets. But Camryn swore never to let down her walls again. And she vowed never to fall in love.
But with Andrew, Camryn finds herself doing a lot of things she never thought she’d do. He shows her what it’s really like to live out-of-the-box and to give in to her deepest, darkest desires. On their sporadic road-trip he becomes the center of her exciting and daring new life, pulling love and lust and emotion out of her in ways she never imagined possible. But will Andrew’s dark secret push them inseparably together, or tear them completely apart?
Series
3 primary books4 released booksThe Chemical Garden is a 5-book series with 4 primary works first released in 2011 with contributions by Lauren DeStefano, J. Lynn, and 3 others.
Series
2 primary books3 released booksThe Edge of Never is a 4-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2012 with contributions by Lauren DeStefano, J. Lynn, and 2 others.
Reviews with the most likes.
You two were meant to be together. It's like some wicked fucking fairytale love story that you just can't make up, y'know?
Appalling. Disturbing. Gross. Tacky. The writing was awful, the plot was the worst kind of predictable, the characters were offensive and despicable, the “romance” was repulsive and as soon as I got to the part where they became “intimate” I pulled the plug on this book. I've read New Adult before, but nothing was as tasteless and repellent as this. I had major problems with this book from the first pages in.
I loath Camryn Bennett and Andrew Parish and everything they represent. They are just a couple of hipsters who think they are better than everybody else. Supposedly they're deep and non-conformist. The reality?
Andrew is a spoiled brat who dropped out of college and spends his day “fighting against” the injustice of society by spending his daddy's money. And he can't even be bothered to stay at the hospital until his father dies. Then the violence. He either bashes people's brains in or thinks of bashing people's brains in. I swear to god, I do not understand the appeal of this. He's such an dreadful walking cliche. He was offered a big modeling gig, his abs are perfect, he plays the guitar like an angel, he listens to classical rock, he has a tattoo of Eurydice and he's lifetime hero is Morpheus. Really? Talk about bad use of Greek Mythology.
As for Camryn, she's such a pathetic excuse for a woman and a top notch hypocrite. She is also shallow, judgmental, and detestable. She calls almost every woman she meets in this book a slut, including her best friend. The horror! Best friend? Why are they best friends again? She seems to have nothing but disdain for Natalie and she obviously thinks she is so much better than her. And yet she forgives her in 5 seconds despite that Natalie threatened to beat her senseless. Her inner monologue is just cringe worthy. She either paths herself on the back for being such a “deep”, special girl, better that every other woman on the planet, because she's perfect, you see. She then takes a self-discovery trip, when in fact she's just running away from her problems and she's labeling it as rebelling against the conformists around her that only think of sex positions while she care about stuff that matters. What stuff? The sound of rain and what the ocean smells like in other part of the world? That's nice and all, but doesn't count as deep.
The reality? She hopes on a bus, she meets this random handsome guy, she “falls in love” with him after a few days, she almost gets raped several times by several guys because she is just that beautiful. I cannot believe that the authors dares to trivialize something as awful as rape. They make several jokes about the rape attempts throughout the book and I was like, they did not just say that, did they? What girl/woman jokes like that right after she was attacked? No only her immediate reaction is completely screwed up, but then she goes on a trip with this guy she's known for a couple of hours only. And after a couple of lame conversations she lets him “own” her. So this is that “deep” stuff she cares about? Ah, the pain in my brain!
The sex scenes were also utterly awful. No, just no.
I cannot believe the rating on this book or all the glowing reviews! WTF Goodreads?
This book basically has every awful NA trope you could imagine and the writing is awful. Skip this one.