Hello lovelies!

I, unlike a lot of readers my age, have been blessed with friends who are just as excited about reading as I am, even though not quite to the extent that I am. So I was in the public library with one of said friends, and we both love reading sapping romances (hence the name of the blog) and she picked up The Coincidence of Callie & Kayden by Jessica Sorensen. As you can see, it’s got an all lovey-dovey and schoomzy cover, so we were both like, “Score!” But then we read it.

Now, this isn’t to say that I didn’t like the book. I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Often when I pick up these contemporary stand alone romances, I don’t read the back cover simply because the author usually does a good job of laying down the situation within the first couple chapters, and I think that it’s fun to guess exactly how similar these books are. It’s kinda of a fun game. You should try it. But the reason why I’m ranting about this is that The Coincidence… isn’t like these other books. Yes, the girl is shy and is kind of socially awkward, and the boy is a quarter back for their high school, but the comparisons end there. I was shocked to find that this book is actually pretty dark, which is something I would have known if I had read the damn back cover.

Warning: This book is not for youngsters! If you’re an older sister or mom looking for a book to give to your 13 girl to get her into read, DO NOT START WITH THIS ONE! This book is realistic, and it has extremely foul language, as well as vivid sex scenes and scenes of intense abuse. And it deals with very sensitive topics, such as abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, and a couple others that I can’t mention in this section due to spoilers. But if you’re looking for an intense, but realistic fiction read, I would recommend it, because it is interesting, and it’s super easy and quick. I read it one day. On Goodreads I gave it 4/5 stars and I would give it about and 88%. It’s not necessarily a fun read, but I think that it’s worth it because it does have a good story telling quality, and it gives us an insight into situation that most of us don’t really deal with.

Bye people who haven’t read it! Go get, read it, and then come back and we can discuss!

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS BELOW

In the beginning of this book, we don’t really know what’s going on with Callie, and we only have the bare minimum amount of information about Kayden. And that makes this book kind of hard to get into, but I did, simply because I wanted to see if my theories were right. And they were. The minute that Callie starting thinking about a “him” I knew that she had been raped, and I also knew that it was someone she knew, because I think she wouldn’t have kept it to herself if it was a stranger. And I also guessed that Kayden was in an abusive home (which we see in the prologue) but I guessed that he was inflicting self harm as well, which we don’t find out until the very end. Oh, my god, the end. I was so worked up, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Throughout the beginning of the book, I couldn’t decide if I liked Callie, and I still can’t. I think that my inability to form a set opinion about her comes from the fact that I don’t understand her at all. I don’t understand her situation and what she went through, but I can understand her decisions, which are laid out for us pretty clear in the book. While she’s talking to Seth (who I absolutely adore) we get the feel for what she went through, but we don’t understand the extent of it until she opens up to Kayden.

But Kayden is a different story. I honestly didn’t care about him this whole book. While I understand that some people deal with issues by shutting down, it makes me so mad, because if you don’t feel, how are you every going to allow yourself to feel happy?! I got really frustrated whenever he would shut down because he was “feeling too much” and I was like, “Bro! You’re not the only one who needs help, and Callie is relying on feeling like someone wants and appreciates her just as much as you are! Stop being so selfish!” Ugh! Kayden made me not want to feel bad for him, and even when Daisy cheated on him, I just wanted to yell at him that that’s what you get, dumbass! But he wasn’t too torn up about it, so it was okay. And then he ran to Callie, so that was good, but I still don’t like him.

I was also kind of mad at him for moving as fast as he did with Callie, even after he found out that she had been raped. I would be super hesitant to touch a girl after finding that out, especially since he has seen first hand how she has handled it all these years. But that, I would argue, is a bonding point for them. They each handled their own situations in really unhealthy ways, which was why I was mad at them. But at the same time, I have no idea what I would do or how I would handle those situations. It’s completely foreign territory for me, and I feel so hesitant to pass any sort of judgement on them because of what they went through.

Despite the fact that I wanted to kick them in the shins a lot of the time, I did enjoy reading their intimate moments, because that was what I was looking for when I picked up this book, and Sorensen does a really good job with the make out scenes. It’s descriptive, but not to the point where I get uncomfortable reading it with someone in the room, ya know?

The thing that made me the most mad about this book was the fact that it didn’t end. The pages stopped like it was a TV show season finale, not the end of a book. Now, I’m not against cliffhangers, and if you read my review of Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas, I was really mad that we had no cliffhanger. Maybe it’s because I thought that The Coincidence… was going to be a stand alone, but I think that it just ended a really terrible way. Really, you’re going to have him on his death bed, and not give us any indication of wether he will live or die? I was FURIOUS. I got so worked up that I had to walk around the block in nothing but a shirt, shorts and socks. There is snow on the ground where I live, and it was like 9 o’clock at night. It was fucking freezing, but I had to take a walk in order to calm down so that I could think about the book rationally. But I’m still so freaking pissed off about the ending. GAAHIDHKL! Sending all my rage at Sorensen.

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So, that’s my basic and not very in depth review of this book. Tell me in the comments what your favorite parts were, what you thought, wether you wanted to drive your car into a wall because of the ending. I want to know all of it!

Please follow and check me out on Twitter and Instagram, it’s all in the Are Those My Friends? page, and I’ll see you guys when I finish my next book. You can check out my currently reading shelve on Goodreads on the right and can join me in my next literary adventure!

xoxo Aubrey