Little Miss Bookmark: Book Review: Buh-Bye, V Card: Naughty New Adult Box Set (The Undergrad Years) by Avery Aster

Do you remember your first time? Relive falling in love, get naughty, and be good at being bad with a bad boy with the Undergrad Years mini-series. We've packed the box with the best in new adult, erotic romance, and contemporary romance.

The box set includes Love, Lex (Undergrad Years #1) Yours Truly, Taddy (Undergrad Years #2) XO, Blake (Undergrad Years #3) and a bonus erotic romance novel Unscrupulous (Manhattanites #1).

More specifically ...

This summer, I’d planned to celebrate my eighteenth birthday in Europe with my fellow Manhattanites—Taddy Brill, Blake Morgan, and Vive Farnworth—until I caught my boyfriend screwing my mother. According to the police report, this vomit-inducing incident happened around the same time I’d supposedly blown-up my mother’s penthouse. Like I’m walking around Soho with a stick of dynamite in my Louis Vuitton purse—not! Now, my besties and I are in jail.

Officer Ford Gotti, the Harley-wheelin’ biker cop who arrested us, keeps sticking his perfectly-sculpted nose into my case. His inked body is jacked like a superhero, and he says I can trust him. He wants me to fess up. I won’t. Not again. Why should I? My friends and I had a previous stint in juvie that nearly destroyed us. I gotta protect them and keep my mouth shut. Right? —Lex Easton, women’s studies major, motorcycle enthusiast, and virgin.

I received this box set from NetGalley and I was really excited to jump in and see what this new adult romance collection was all about. I'll be honest, I only made it about halfway through the first book and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't turn another page, I could read even another word. I. Was. Done. I had to put it down because I totally checked out.

This is my first and last book by Avery Aster. Sometimes I'll give an author another shot if I was a bit on the fence about the first novel that I read by them but I wasn't on the fence this time. I was over that fence and four states away. It did not go well. Unfortunately, this is not going to be one of my gushing reviews. This one is going to be rough.

From the very first sentence in the first book of the set (Love, Lex), my stomach just dropped. The book is just all over the damn place. I couldn't keep up with what was happening ... it was like a tweaking hummingbird just flitting from one topic to the next. It caused a serious case of reading whiplash coupled with a healthy dose of disinterest. It reads almost as if it's a jumble of thoughts that weren't fully explored and with each disjointed sentence, you're just pulled further into this vortex of confusion.

It sure as hell doesn't help that this book is written using the urban dictionary for every other word. Everything is in such heavy slang that was uper-cray (did I use that correctly?) and nothing was jelly (again, I don't know if this is the right context, I had to Google this shit to see what it meant), forreals (this has to be another language altogether). I just wanted to grab my Kindle and scream, "SPEAK ENGLISH, I WANT TO READ YOU!!!". Yes, I understand that the book is written from the POV of a 17 year old. Got it. But she sounds like a damn idiot. Maybe that is what the author is going for. Who the heck knows. But it helps if the reader can comprehend what in the hell is going on and in order to know what is going on, we need to be able to recognize more words than just a handful every couple of pages.

I absolutely ABHORRED the main character, Lex. She is a self absorbed, neurotic teenager and the way she talks is what is wrong with this generation. I'm not that old and I remember using slang when I was growing up but at least you could still decipher the English language when we talked. She's also crass and immature. You should enjoy reading about people that are different than you, not get annoyed.

Since I'm talking about characters, the whole beginning thing (I'm not giving away anything that isn't in the blurb or the first chapter) with the boyfriend was just asinine. So this dude is staying in a relationship with Lex but refusing to have sex with her because she's overweight. I call bullshit. No sexually active teenage boy is going to say no to sex when it is being offered up on a silver platter because a chick is ten pounds overweight and then go play hide-the-salami with her coked out, has-been mom. Give me a break. It's just not believable.

There were also these news articles or statements, I'm not totally sure what they were at this point. Anyway, they were weird because they weren't needed and it drew your attention away from the story as you are trying to figure out why they are included. There were also this dream sequence that literally lasted page after page after page ... it was to the point where you forget that you're reading a dream. I don't know if that is what the author was going for and she was trying to show how off in Lala Land this girl was or what.

Most authors of YA or New Adult books are in fact, well over the age that they are writing about. There's nothing wrong with that. But there is a problem when it feels like you're insulting that generation with over-usage of nonsensical terms and phrases. Our son is 13 years old and I've been to tons of school functions where hundreds of teenagers are and I've NEVER heard kids use this much slang and improper grammar.

Ugh. I'll get off my soapbox. Let's just say that it was not the book for me. The truth of the matter is, if I had the option to give it no stars, that's what I would have done this time. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading New Adult romance novels (or any romance for that matter) and I most certainly will not be picking up another book by this author. Total miss for me.

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

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