Book review: In Too Deep by Michelle Kemper Brownlow

Gracie has just finished her freshman year of college in Memphis when she takes a job at a local pizza joint in her home town of McKenzie, Tennessee. She is the epitome of innocence when she meets Noah. Noah is unabashedly handsome, intriguingly reckless and just cocky enough to be sexy. Gracie’s instincts tell her to stay far away from him and based on the stories she hears from her co-workers he leaves broken hearts in his wake. But still, she can’t explain her fascination with him.

Noah puts aside his bad boy ways when what he thought was a summer crush has him unexpectedly falling in love. But soon after Gracie transfers to UT Knoxville to be with Noah, their unexpected love becomes riddled with anger, deceit and humiliation.

Jake, Noah’s former roommate and Gracie’s best friend, can no longer be a bystander. Gracie’s world falls out from beneath her and when she breaks she turns to Jake for strength. As Jake talks her through a decision she’s not yet strong enough to make, together they uncover a truth so ugly neither of them is prepared for its fallout. Will Jake pull her to the surface or is Gracie Jordan finally In Too Deep?

A free copy was given to me in preparation for its sequel’s blog tour.

In Too Deep is obviously an Issue Book; you can tell that just from the summary.  Because of that, I feel like I’m supposed to treat it a little gentler than I might with another book, because there’s a lot of psychology behind it and even though I might not agree with Gracie’s choices, I’m sure there are girls who this kind of thing has happened to, and whose stories are too close to this for it to be comfortable.

That said, however, after the first few chapters, I started to have very little sympathy for Gracie.  She’s… kind of stupid, to put it lightly.  Past the gesture Noah made with the Jack Johnson song in the car, I didn’t see anything really appealing about him that would have sucked her in.  He was either really boring or really mean.  The only reason I can really think that she’d want to stay with him is that she gave her virginity to him, which is pounded into our heads.  She even angsts about how whoever she ends up with “won’t have all of her on their wedding night.” Melodramatic much?  Geeze.  I understand there are people who that’s important for them but… well yeah, I don’t get why she cares about that, of all things, after all that’s happened.

The storyline itself is, as you’ve probably guessed, one of those ones that just uses the same plot point over and over.  They break up, she vows she’s done with him for good, she cries to Jake, Noah says he’ll change, she takes him back, he does something stupid, lather rinse, repeat times ten.  Hence why I thought she was kind of stupid.  There’s also the thing about him sucking the life out of her, about how she was so vibrant and full of life, but we never see that, not even in the flashbacks to before they were together.

The dialog is ultra-stiff, too.  A lot of the time they don’t use contractions, and I’m reminded of really bad actors reading from a script.  That’s not good.

And yeah, it reads like wish fulfilment when Gracie finally has sex with Jake.  I swear to God she thinks she’s had a religious experience.  I found myself rolling my eyes at all the “our souls connected” iterations.  I also don’t really get what Jake sees in her considering, again, the whole “vibrant and free” thing is never shown, only needy clinginess.  For God’s sake, she self-diagnoses herself as addicted to relationships.

Yeah this book just didn’t really do it for me.  It wasn’t terrible, but I don’t think it’s lived up to the hype I’ve seen around for it.  It feels amateurishly written from the point of view of someone who either doesn’t understand the subject at all, or is too close to it and therefore thinks that everything they write is the absolute truth.  Either way, I’m hoping the sequel is better.