The Love Interest by Cale Dietrich- Book Review

I am a Book of the Month affiliate. What that means is if you click my Book of the Month links, I get a small portion of the sale. As an affiliate, I also get, on occasion, the opportunity to pick one of the picks ahead of time to read it, so I can review it at the beginning of the month.

This month, after looking at the picks, I knew I wanted three of them and the new book Into the Water by Paula Hawkins, which can be free for you this month by clicking my link and using the code "Water" and purchasing a 3 month subscription. There's the shill :-)

Back to the story, I knew I wanted three of them, but The Love Interest didn't seem up my alley, so I requested that one. I knew it wasn't my type of book, but I wanted to challenge myself.

I am writing that up front because, it definitely wasn't my type of book. To me, it read like an anime, but in novel form. It did flip the script on the love triangle and had a good concept, but the writing style threw me off that I stopped enjoying the book.

The story is told from Caden's perspective, who is a 'Nice.' (Yes, really) He is a sculpted spy who is to have the role of the nice guy to seduce the woman they are spying on. He is up against Dylan, who is a 'Bad' (yes, really). He is also out to seduce the woman, but is playing the bad boy. He too is sculpted to be attractive to the woman.

The two are in competition with one another and whomever wins, the other is killed off. As the two set off, something starts happening to Caden. He starts thinking about Dylan more and more. As they are in competition with one another, they start realizing they are attracted to one another and the triangle flips. What will happen?

The great thing is this is truly a script flip in the sense that this begins as the typical teen romance, even going so far as calling one 'Nice' and one 'Bad.' It was a nice twist to have this also be a gay romance novel for teens. That was incredibly clever.

The challenges Caden has are also very good. He is conflicted not only with Dylan, but Dylan also feeds into Caden's 'bad' side. He convinces Caden to do things that nice guys wouldn't do. It was fun to be in Caden's head.

The bad part was that Caden speaks like a teenager most of the time. There were some sentences where I not only stated "no guy would say that," but also thought "this makes no sense." There were also some difficulties of how Caden could know so much about certain things, but not know what coffee is like. The writing just gave me a lot of trouble that I couldn't get past. It wasn't a book for me.

Sadly, I gave this one 2.5 stars for the script flip and focusing on a gay relationship, but the writing took me out of enjoying the book.

Here is your Book of the Month link. Remember use the code Water to get "Into the Water" free with a 3 month subscription- The Love Interest