Review for Crash by Nicole Williams

Crash by Nicole Williams
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Release: 6th June 2013
Genre: Mature YA, New Adult, Romance, Contemporary
Source: Received from the publishers in exchange for an honest review





Goodreads Summary: 

"Southpointe High is the last place Lucy wanted to wind up her senior year of school. Right up until she stumbles into Jude Ryder, a guy whose name has become its own verb, and synonymous with trouble. He's got a rap sheet that runs longer than a senior thesis, has had his name sighed, shouted, and cursed by more women than Lucy dares to ask, and lives at the local boys home where disturbed seems to be the status quo for the residents. Lucy had a stable at best, quirky at worst, upbringing. She lives for wearing the satin down on her ballet shoes, has her sights set on Juilliard, and has been careful to keep trouble out of her life. Up until now…

Jude's everything she knows she needs to stay away from if she wants to separate her past from her future. But she's about to find out that staying away is the only thing she's incapable of.

For Lucy Larson and Jude Ryder, love's about to become the thing that tears them apart."

Review
Crash was a book that I fell in love with straight away. The book begins with our couple Lucy and Jude’s first meeting during the summer. I loved that there was no beating about the bush and that we were thrown into the romance and story right away. After only a few short pages I knew this would be a book I’d love and it’s become one of my favourite New Adult reads.

Lucy was a fantastic heroine and I’d go as far as to say she’s now up there with my favourite book ladies! Lucy is a truly nice girl – she works hard at school, is ambitious, kind and caring, and she isn’t afraid to go after what she wants and stand up for herself. She was such a well-rounded character and I loved her so much! Reading this book from her point of view was like chatting to a good friend.

I have to be honest and say my first impression of Jude was not a good one. In fact I thought he was a total ass! But as Lucy got to know and fall in love with the real Jude I did too. He’s a guy who does all the wrong things for all the right reasons. There are good intentions and a good heart behind his bad decisions. His temper did put me off at times though and although I get that he was only protecting Luce it did stop him from being a truly swoony book guy in my opinion.

The romance between Luce and Jude was brilliant but it’s not without its struggles through misunderstandings. Despite whatever problems this couple faced you could tell that they truly love one another. It was clear they each wanted the other to be happy and have the best in life even if that meant being apart.

I did have a few niggles with this book that stopped it from being a perfect read. I guess I thought this book would be something it’s not. It wasn’t different in a bad way just…different. I thought that a lot of this book would be about dancing and whilst Lucy does love to dance there’s not really a whole lot of it like I was lead to believe. Secondly the book felt more YA than NA with Lucy and Jude being in high school, it’s also not as steamy as other New Adult reads and is more on par with mature YA like Simone Elkeles and Katie McGarry’s books. Lucy was also very mature for a seventeen year old - when reading there were times when her voice struck me as much older. Basically I felt like this story would have been better suited to a college setting with slightly older characters and I’m looking forward to getting that with the sequel Clash.

I loved the surprising twist at the end of this book and didn’t see it coming at all! I loved that it wasn’t overly dramatic or cheesy – it fitted in well with the story. I loved this book so much that I picked up the sequel straight away as I had to know what happened next! Overall Crash isn’t a book without its faults but I loved the characters and love story so much that I found it easy to overlook the few small niggles I had that made it less than perfect. I’d definitely recommend this to fans of New Adult and Mature YA.