dec 2011 booklist

54. katie klein - cross my heart
3.5 stars: while i liked the overall story, i thought the lame twist at the end seemed forced just so to have a dramatic climax. but working of the premise that parker is an undercover cop, can't believe the girl took long to forgive him. yes, he lied but that was his job. i think she was just too young or immature to understand. on the other hand, what is a 22 year old doing, messing with a young girl while on the job. you can say it's love but still have some professionalisn and he even put her in harm's way. so overall, i felt that they were too young to have this kind of relationship. maybe if the girl was in college and he was a fresh cop, the story would have been more reasonable. and why does blake have to be the bad guy in the end? why can't they just break up because the relationship is not working anymore? i think that's the trouble with some stories dealing with third parties... the boyfriend or girlfriend should not always be the bad guy or girl. sometimes relationships just dont work out.

55. jennifer jabaley - crush control
3.5 stars: the story spent too much time with quinton and the girl and less on max and the girl. all we know is that max and the girl have communicated all these years but when she was back in town, there weren't a lot of scenes of max and the girl.. so i felt like either what they were feeling was due to their puppy love when they were kids or their constant communication has turned the crush into love. and i felt sorry for quinton, all through out the story he was "controlled" by the spell so we didnt have the chance to really meet quinton as normal person.

56. toni blake - holly lane
4 stars: ive never really liked sue ann that much in the previous books but i was surprised and felt for her when jeff cheated and left her. her confused feelings and refusal to love adam back maybe a bit painful to read chapter after chapter but it was a reasonable concern. however, if i were her friends, i wouldn't encourage her to start another relationship so quickly after her divorce. she should have let her heart heal first before diving back to love. on the other hand, adam is someone everyone knows and is considered a good guy so i can understand why her friends were fine with it. i didn't like adam's scroogy side and his xmas carol-like side plot, it was cheesy and didn't add much value to the story -- i skipped those parts. and jeff was portrayed as a good guy for the past three books and he suddenly changed to a jerk without reason. hope there were also more scenes of sue ann and jeff to better explain why he did it.

57. abby mcdonald - boys, bears and a serious pair of hiking boots
3.5 stars: the green teen was a bit extreme, other wise this is an ok story, a bit predictable coz even though there were 3 guys, it was so obvious from the very start who she will end up with (it's always the rude mysterious boy!).

i was only able to read half of what i read in 2010, but that's okay..i still enjoyed the books.. looking forward to another year of good reads!!