Alex by Sawyer Bennett – C+ I’ve had this book on my TBR for some time. I bought the second in the series when it was on special recently and thought I ought to start with the first one. I was a little meh about it at the very start. The writing style seemed a little too simplistic and on the didactic side and Sutton was just too perfect. But then there was a section from Alex’s POV where he was remembering a particulary awful thing his father did to him and it got me right in the feels.  The mid section of the story was a little stronger but Alex wasn’t that much of an asshole most of the time, depsite his warnings to the contrary.  In the end, it fizzled a bit, with the wish-fulfillment and sparkly rainbows of the side plots which felt unrealistic.  Alex had a whiplash fast change from “I’m falling for her” to “I have to break up with her because reasons” to “what a doofus I was, I want her back”.  It didn’t make a lot of sense to me from a narrative perspective.  I also wanted a lot more about Sutton’s and Alex’s drug awareness programme. Sutton was supposed to be giving the team owners a weekly report about whether Alex was behaving himself, but if she did any of that, it didn’t make its way into the book. Continue reading