BOOK REVIEW: Read Me Like A Book by Liz Kessler

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. 

Ashleigh Walker is in love. You know the feeling - that intense, heart-racing, all-consuming emotion that can only come with first love. It's enough to stop her worrying about bad grades at college. Enough to distract her from her parents' marriage troubles. There's just one thing bothering her... Shouldn't it be her boyfriend, Dylan, who makes her feel this way - not Miss Murray, her English teacher?

I had been looking forward to this book for a long time and I was a bit disappointed. The story itself was okay, I guess. It was just lacking something and it's hard to put my finger on it. Maybe it's the whole crush on a teacher thing. I don't necessarily have a problem with this storyline, as long as it is handled well and it doesn't glorify those types of relationships. This book didn't glorify it and I think it was handled well. The problem was that I didn't understand why Ashleigh fell for Ms. Murray so hard. She didn't seem to stand out as a particularly exceptional teacher. She was just kind of blah. I understand Ms Murray was really just a plot point to help Ashleigh come to terms with who she was, but I guess I wish there had been more scenes between the two of them that would explain why Ashleigh fell so hard.

Ashleigh's family was AWFUL. They fought all the time. When they weren't fighting, they were giving each other the silent treatment and the mom would do childish things like ask Ashleigh to tell her dad to do something, even though HE WAS RIGHT THERE. Man that was annoying as hell. Her mom didn't know anything about Ashleigh's life. Her parents had no clue that she had a boyfriend at all.

Speaking of boyfriend, I didn't get the attraction to Dylan or the speed at which their relationship developed. They went out for a couple of weeks and suddenly, Dylan is telling her he wants to have sex with her. And she was considering it even though she was a virgin! Rubbish. 

And let's talk about her friends, who were just as poorly developed. Ashleigh's best friend, Cat, was not even in the picture that much. She was mentioned sporadically and then all of a sudden, the two of them are having a fight about how awful a friend Ashleigh is. Really? The fight literally came out of nowhere. Both of them kind of acted like brats about the whole thing and it just made Ashleigh feel even more alone. I would have loved for friendship to be more of a focus so that Ashleigh would have someone to talk to, especially since her family was so royally screwed up.

The ending was kind of predictable, I guess, but it did wrap everything up. I was just kind of bored by the end. I wanted there to be more emotion and more feels, but there was just the feeling that I wanted to hurry up and finish. Very disappointing. 

Buy/Borrow/Skip: Skip this one.