Review: Bastard by J.L. Perry

My name is Carter Reynolds. I was born a bastard and I’ll die a bastard. I learnt it at a young age, and nothing and nobody can change that. I’m on a one-way path of destruction, and God help anyone who gets in my way. I hate my life. Actually, I hate pretty much everything.

That’s until I meet the kid next door. Indi-freakin’-ana. My dislike for her is instant. From the moment I lay eyes on her, she ignites something within me. She makes me feel things I thought I was incapable of feeling. I don’t like it, not one bit. When she looks at me with her big, beautiful, haunting green eyes, it’s like she can see into the depths of my soul. It freaks me the hell out. She’s like sunshine and rainbows in my world of gloom and doom. I hate sunshine and rainbows.

••••

I’m Indiana Montgomery. My friends call me Indi. Despite losing my mum at the age of six, I have a wonderful life and great friends. My dad more than makes up for the fact that I only have one parent. I’m his little girl, the centre of his world. I adore him.

When Carter Reynolds moves in next door, my life takes a turn for the worse. He’s gorgeous, sinfully hot, but that’s where my compliments end. He seems hell-bent on making my life miserable. He acts tough, but when I look into his eyes I don’t see it. I see hurt and pain. To me, he seems lost.

I should hate him for the way he treats me, but surprisingly I don’t. If anything, I feel sorry for him. I want to help him find peace. Help him find the light that I know is buried somewhere within his darkness, but he won’t have a bar of it.

He’s warned me time and time again to stay away, but I can’t. I’m drawn to him for some reason. He’s always referring to himself as a bastard. That may be true, but to me, he’s more like a beautifully, misunderstood bastard. Whether he likes it or not, I refuse to give up on him.

 

If I were to say one word about this book, it would be "conflicted". I've been conflicted with my rating, my feelings, my thoughts and everything in between when it comes to Bastard. Usually, I'm pretty firm in my feelings on something but this time, I flip-flopped multiple times. 

First things first ... the copy of the book that I received didn't say that it was an ARC, so I'm left to assume that this is the final product. Unfortunately, it has punctuation issues. Quite a few of them. The author is Australian and I don't know if they do punctuation differently down there but they might, I guess. It's something that irritated me a bit, so I thought that I would bring it up. 

The beginning of the novel reads like a YA novel but at the same time, it felt almost as if the sentence structure was too simple. Like the author was very close to being patronizing. The sentences were short, simple and very basic. This quickly goes away as the characters start to grow up. Also, for something that reads like a YA novel for the first 40%, there sure was a lot of sex and penis talk. YA is aimed towards 13-17 year olds. There is no way in hell I would let my 13 year old read this book. Holy crap. There was just so much (very explicit) sex. That being said, the book is geared more towards New Adult for the last 60% of Bastard. Even with it being NA, it makes me blush a bit just thinking about an 18 year old reading some of this stuff.

The story itself was okay. It kept me reading, so I guess that's something! I quickly noticed that there was a lot of detail about inconsequential things but then the author would gloss over important things to the plot as if it was an afterthought. I'm not totally for sure why it felt like this ... there were just a lot of situations that I think needed more information included just to round out the story a bit better. There were also a few situations that happened and were resolved a little too easily ... as if the author took the easy way out of a situation that she got the characters into or something.

The characters were pretty good though. I enjoyed getting to know Carter and Indi. They were both very full characters and I felt like I knew them almost as well as I know myself. There were a few secondary characters that I wish I knew a little more about though but they felt passed over. 

I don't know if I will pick up another novel by this author ... if I didn't feel so meh about it, I probably would. But as it stands right now ... I will probably say ... no thank you. 

Lastly ... I need to talk about something very serious. We've all heard of blue balls. This author introduced me to blue flaps. You can guess what it means. This phrase, "blue flaps", should never, ever, EVER ... be repeated. Ever. Again. I don't care what the context is. Never say it again. That is all.

* I received this novel in exchange for an honest review *

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