Love Story by Jennifer Echols

Title/Author: Love Story by Jennifer Echols
Publisher/Date published: Gallery Books, July 19th 2011
How I got this book: received it from the publisher as an egalley

Goodreads summary: "For Erin Blackwell, majoring in creative writing at the New York City college of her dreams is more than a chance to fulfill her ambitions - it's her ticket away from the tragic memories that shadow her family's racehorse farm in Kentucky. But when she refuses to major in business and take over the farm herself someday, her grandmother gives Erin's college tuition and promised inheritance to their maddeningly handsome stable boy, Hunter Allen. Now Erin has to win an internship and work late nights at a coffee shop to make her own dreams a reality. She should despise Hunter... so why does he sneak into her thoughts as the hero of her latest writing assignment?
Then, on the day she's sharing that assignment with her class, Hunter walks in. He's joining her class. And after he reads about himself in her story, her private fantasies about him must be painfully clear. She only hopes to persuade him not to reveal her secret to everyone else. But Hunter devises his own creative revenge, writing sexy stories that drive the whole class wild with curiosity and fill Erin's heart with longing. Now she's not just imagining what might have been. She's writing a whole new ending for her romance with Hunter... except this story could come true."

Okay, so from the cover and from this summary I was expecting a sweet read. So there would be family drama, I can handle that. What I could not handle was the abusive relationship Hunter and Erin had going on. Yes I said it: abusive!

After the first two stories we get to read by them, I thought they'd work it out. Instead, they write stories for their class aimed at hurting the other person. How is this romantic??? And how is it ok for Hunter to be hurtful to Erin? Even if he's hot and smart, that doesn't make the other stuff go away.

And there's the whole Hunter plotting with Erin's grandmother, who we never actually meet. I mean, she's the villain of the book and we never meet her face-to-face?? Erin's grandmother seems cold and not grandmotherly at all. I would have like them to talk things through and find out what her grandmother's reasons were for cutting Erin off, but the story never got to that point.

Erin and Hunter are NOT good for eachother. They hurt eachother and are just generally worse version of themselves when they're around eachother. And then suddenly they're in love? I mean, Hunter is only nice for two seconds when they're alone and Erin makes a lot of bad decisions as well. I didn't feel the romance. I saw two people with unresolved issues that in the end were still unresolved and I felt slightly cheated by the ending.

I didn't really care for the secondary characters either, one guy was a romance-discriminating, annoying jerk, but conveniently a match for one of Erin's roommates.

All in all, I'm not impressed. I think the only reason I finished it was that I couldn't help but think: 'But it should be getting good soon'. Only it didn't really, it got worse. I did like that it was about college-aged kids and how they're dealing with classes and being away from home for the first time.

My rating: 1 star