blub

I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

The blurb and the story confused me a bit when I first started reading. I had to check the blurb to what I was reading a few times because it just didn't seem like the same story.

Kyle at the start of the book is fourteen years old. His life revolves around blogging about a musician named Stoney Rockland, whom he is a major fan of. His home life is nothing to talk about and he finds himself catching the unwanted attention of his math teacher, Roman Nigel. Wherever Kyle goes, Nigel just happens to be there too. When Nigel manages to insinuate himself into Kyle's home life and wins his mother over. At age sixteen, Kyle knows he has to leave to save himself and his mother.

Bryce Auburn is a twenty-eight year old wildcatter. While on business in Las Vegas, he comes across eighteen year old Kyle (who at the time claimed he was twenty-one). The two have a fantastic time together until Kyle leaves to attend one of Stoney's concert and the two have a argument. Anyway to get to the point a lot of things happen between that time and Kyle finally starting a career in modeling.

The book covers Kyle's life from age fourteen to eighteen. While I did like reading about the issues that Kyle encountered and his troubles. It kind of dragged in some parts and there was off page growth from age fourteen to sixteen and then again from age sixteen to eighteen. Kyle living in Vegas didn't seem to deter his way of living. He didn't appear to have any hardship because he had always been a kleptomaniac and could swindle his targets as he liked. It seemed to be his natural skill. Also I was curious about how Kyle found the revenue to even leave his hometown. Were readers suppose to assume Kyle stole that money?

Kyle and Bryce's relationship came off as complicated and I wasn't sure how deep their feelings could be for each other since they only met a handful times. There wasn't very much romance with how Kyle kept chasing after Stoney and then Kyle up and leaving when things with Stoney went south. I actually felt a bit sad for Bryce since his attachment was stronger than Kyle's and he wanted the best for Kyle. For a sixteen chapter book I thought a lot was happening in the story but the pacing was worked and it wasn't overwhelming.

I do have a bit of a bit of issue with the formatting and/or some of the UK English portion of the book. In my reading it felt like certain portions of the story was a bit disjointed. It kind of had that feel like I had missed something but going back to read the previous page did nothing. It broke my concentration and took me out of the head space I was when reading the book. The repetitive information that Bryce was worth 500 million was a little grating.