Review: Be with Me - J. Lynn

Be with Me
J. Lynn
Series: Wait For You, #2
Genre: Young Adult, Romance
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Word Rating: Surprisingly Good
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LOL WTF this book was so surprising. I got the first book in this series off Kiersten after BEA 2013, and I really hated it. You can read my review of Wait for You here! It was the first book I had ever reviewed, and needless to say, I didn't come close to loving it. This year, I was unable to meet J. Lynn in person to get a copy of Be with Me, and Marlon was nice enough to get a signed copy for me. Needless to say, I was ready to have fun laughing out loud at how bad this book would be, but surprisingly enough, it was pretty good.

The main characters in this book are the little sister of perfect washboard abs Cam from the first book, and his best friend, Jase (who is also pretty good looking wow I guess all the pretty boys run together in this book). Tess, Cam's sister, starts out suffering from a knee injury. She was supposed to have been a professional dancer on full scholarship, but an injury brought her to college for a while to heal up. Tessa was immediately more 3D than Avery was in the first book of this series. While Avery seemed quiet and reserved due to her impending secret, Tess is fiery, able to get mad, while still being sociable (although it is mentioned she doesn't have a ton of friends) and kind.

As you may have guessed from the title, this is a romance novel, and although a lot of the book centers around Tess and Jase, there is a lot more to this book than just a quick romance. Tess and Jase are both actually deep characters, with different flaws (rather than the one flaw that was given to each main character in Wait for You), and a lot of their conversations and analysis of each other are written quite well. Although it is kind of predictable, a problem J. Lynn had in her first book, it wasn't poorly written or uninteresting. It was more like I was on the edge of my seat to find out if my predictions would come true (they always did, which is okay I guess).

What I actually really liked about this book was that J. Lynn took a lot of the things I made fun of in my last review (I.E. The cookie scene) and turned it into something kind of cute (albeit a little cliche, but I'll forgive it). In this book, a lot of the romance centers around cupcakes, which turns into a symbol for Tess and Jase. This is really being mentioned here because I saw it as growth in Lynn's writing style (also she signed my book "Amrutha, cupcakes!" which is just adorable).

I loved this book because the characters actually grew with one another and although I had been previously prejudiced, proved to be much more interesting than I had thought. Tess's unbelievably caring and understanding nature was really necessary to the plot as well, although I wish that caring nature was a little flawed, she was decent as characters go in terms of growth and insightful-ness.

Definitely much better than the first round, and if this kind of growth in writing style appears again, I'll def. be the one in line for the next book in the series.

- Amrutha

Which sequels have you read that have been better than the first in the series?
Let us know in the comments!