Review: Love Story

Title: Love Story
Author: Jennifer Echols
Publisher: MTV Books
Publication Date: July 19th, 2011
Genre: YA, Romance

Erin Blackwell has just moved from Kentucky to New York City to go to college, majoring in Creative Writing. Raised on her Grandmother’s ranch, Erin has recently found herself poor for the first time in her life when her Grandmother refused to pay for her education if she didn’t major in Business. As she struggles with juggling classes, writing and work, she takes refuge in her Creative Writing class. Hunter, her farm’s stable boy, became her Grandmother’s heir when Erin refused to major in business. Although Erin should resent him, she still finds herself fantasizing about his blue eyes and muscled chest. While Hunter might be the villain of Erin’s story, he has become the hero of the short story she’s writing. When Erin’s class is about to discuss her romance story, Hunter transfers into the class and recognizes himself in her story. Erin loves romance novels with happy endings, but will she and her stable boy ever get their own?

I wonder how many times the word stable boy appears in this book? Overall, I can’t say I liked this one. I actually disliked mostly everything about this book, so if you don’t want to read a negative review then you should probably stop reading right now. I have to admit that I had my doubts about this book from reading the synopsis, so maybe I was biased against Love Story from the start. The back made it sound like an episode of a dated teen sitcom. The book begins with Erin’s short story, and this worked better than I thought it would. Hunter and Erin’s stories appear throughout the novel, and were short, for the most part. The first thing I disliked about the book as a whole was the characters. None of them felt very realistic, but Erin and Hunter were probably the most dislikeable leading characters I’ve read about in a while. She was arrogant and just a hateful girl. When (in her head) she called a girl who talks to Hunter in class a bitch, I knew I wasn’t going to like her. Erin and Hunter were very immature with the stories they wrote back and forth. A lot of trouble could have been saved if they had just talked to each other like adults. I know I was supposed to swoon over Hunter, but I couldn’t stand him. I hated how he treated Erin, from lying to her about her estranged father coming to see her, to his deal with her Grandmother. I didn’t like Erin, but I’m not even sure if she deserved Hunter. I’m no expert on US universities, but I don’t understand why Creative Writing was a required course. Or how small a New York City college seemed. The plot had too much drama for me, especially towards the end. I didn’t understand Erin’s fear of her professor finding out she based her story on reality, since a lot of great authors do the same thing. Didn’t Hemingway base The Sun Also Rises on a real experience? That being said, Hunter and Erin took writing what you know a bit too far. Although I might have been nitpicking with a few things, I didn’t enjoy Love Story. Perhaps this book just wasn’t for me, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

1.5/5

“And it's time you learned that there's a big difference between your writing and your life. To do it right, your witing takes an incredible amount of work. Your life takes more.”