‘When Brit­tany Ellis walks into chem­istry class on the first day of senior year, she has no clue that her care­fully cre­ated “per­fect” life is about to unravel before her eyes. She’s forced to be lab part­ners with Alex Fuentes, a gang mem­ber from the other side of town, and he is about to threaten every­thing she’s worked so hard for—her flaw­less rep­u­ta­tion, her rela­tion­ship with her boyfriend, and the secret that her home life is any­thing but perfect.

Alex is a bad boy and he knows it. So when he makes a bet with his friends to lure Brit­tany into his life, he thinks noth­ing of it. But soon Alex real­izes Brit­tany is a real per­son with real prob­lems, and sud­denly the bet he made in arro­gance turns into some­thing much more.

In a pas­sion­ate story about look­ing beneath the sur­face, Simone Elke­les breaks through the stereo­types and bar­ri­ers that threaten to keep Brit­tany and Alex apart.’

I can’t remem­ber now which blog­ger (or mul­ti­ple blog­gers), first con­vinced me to read these books, but I’m send­ing a big fat thank you out there to who­ever you were! I would never have dis­cov­ered these on my own, (for some rea­son I’ve never been drawn to con­tem­po­rary YA — though thats chang­ing quickly) and Simone Elke­les has quickly become one of my favourite authors. She cer­tainly knows how to bring the swoon!

Any­one who is a fan of romance with a strong plot and well-written char­ac­ters should check out Elke­les work. Per­fect Chem­istry (if you hadn’t guessed from all the glow­ing reviews on Goodreads) is an addic­tive read. The main rea­son is sim­ply that Elke­les knows how to write fan­tas­tic chem­istry (no pun intended) between her two leads, and one hell of an attrac­tive guy, with­out falling to far into cheesy and cliché territory.

Alex and Brit­tany, com­plete oppo­sites who come from two very dif­fer­ent cul­tures, find them­selves increas­ingly intrigued and attracted to one another. Paired together in chem­istry class, the sparks soon begin to fly between them as they strug­gle with their grow­ing feel­ings and dis­cover they might have more in com­mon then they first thought. There is def­i­nitely a Romeo and Juliet feel to Per­fect Chem­istry and the gang ele­ment pro­vides an under­ly­ing dan­ger and ten­sion to the story — mak­ing what could have been just another teenage romance, refresh­ingly unique.

The attrac­tion between these two char­ac­ters is intense, but believ­able, and Elke­les gives us plenty of siz­zling scenes and won­der­ful bit­ing dia­logue between the two. I loved Alex (well — who didn’t? He’s the guy all girls fall for but who all par­ents hate). He por­trays the clas­sic ‘bad-boy’ image to sur­vive, caught in a world of vio­lence and drugs inher­ited from his father. A mem­ber of the Latino Bloods, Alex is con­fi­dent, intel­li­gent and dan­ger­ous; and anx­ious to keep his fam­ily safe and stop his lit­tle broth­ers from fol­low­ing in his, and their fathers, foot­steps. I was drawn into the story, as Alex strug­gles to keep his feel­ings for Brit­tany — who doesn’t fit into his world, under con­trol; and has to make a choice between keep­ing the peo­ple he loves safe, and fight­ing for a future he’s not ready to admit he might actu­ally want.

Brit­tany is an inter­est­ing char­ac­ter because she isn’t imme­di­ately the type of pro­tag­o­nist many read­ers will warm to. She is your typ­i­cal, stun­ningly gor­geous, pop­u­lar cheer­leader type. Skinny, rich and blonde who (seem­ingly) cares only about how she looks. But a lot of this is actu­ally a facade, and Elke­les devel­ops a com­plex, relat­able char­ac­ter, under con­stant pres­sure from a dys­func­tional fam­ily to be per­fect and one who des­per­ately loves and wor­ries about her dis­abled sis­ter and I grew to like her char­ac­ter very much. As the story pro­gresses we begin to see how both Brit­tany and Alex con­form to an expected stereo­type to pro­tect themselves. I enjoyed watch­ing Alex enjoy­ment of get­ting under Brittany’s skin and ril­ing her up just because he can, turn into a deter­mi­na­tion to break down her walls, giv­ing her the courage to be herself.

Per­fect Chem­istry isn’t a par­tic­u­larly orig­i­nal story and there is a bit of a cookie-cutter end­ing (which I still enjoyed because some­times, I just want the cute, happy end­ing), but a fun read, with strong char­ac­ters and a fan­tas­ti­cally writ­ten romance. I can’t com­ment on whether the gang ele­ment was real­is­ti­cally por­trayed, but it added a grit­ti­ness and depth to the story. This may be a love story at its core, but it tack­les some dif­fi­cult issues, gang life, stereo­types, cul­tural seg­re­ga­tion, that puts Per­fect Chem­istry high above other high school romance nov­els out there. There are also some well-fleshed out sec­ondary char­ac­ters — Alex’s extended fam­ily, Mrs Peter­son, Shel­ley, and in par­tic­u­lar, Alex’s friend Paco. Though the first book in a series, Per­fect Chem­istry works just as well as a stand alone novel — for those who aren’t look­ing for another cliffhanger, you won’t find any here. I can­not rec­om­mend it enough.

Rec­om­mended Read­ing Age: 16+

Rat­ing: 9/10

Rules of Attrac­tion by Simone Elkeles

‘Car­los Fuentes isn’t happy about leav­ing Mex­ico to start the ‘new’ life his older brother, Alex, has planned for him. Car­los liked his free­dom; liv­ing life on the edge and carv­ing out his own path — just like Alex did. 

Kiara West­ford doesn’t talk much; pre­fer­ring instead to shut the world out. And when Car­los bounds into her life she strug­gles to under­stand him and his wild ways. Car­los is sure Kiara thinks she’s too good for him, which is fine because he’s not inter­ested any­way, right? But when they finally open up to each other, the con­nec­tion they feel shocks them both. Can they over­come their fears and realise that some­times oppo­sites really do attract?’

For those of you who loved Per­fect Chem­istry, Rules of Attrac­tion is a must-read. Every­thing that worked so well in the first book is all here, bad boy falling for good girl, cul­tural divides, but it still man­ages to stand apart from its predecessor.

As much as I love this book, it doesn’t have the same impact as Per­fect Chem­istry. That’s because the romance here is much more sweet and Car­los and Kiara don’t have the same obsta­cles to over­come as Alex and Brit­tany. Rules of Attrac­tion focuses on the two lead­ing char­ac­ters with less back story, and though Carlos’s gang activ­i­ties do play a part in the plot, it wasn’t a con­stant threat­en­ing pres­ence, as it was in the first book.

Car­los is in many ways like Alex, but his cocky, wise-ass com­ments makes him a far less like­able char­ac­ter — at least to begin with. Whereas Alex came across as mature and intel­li­gent enough to know what he was get­ting into but step­ping up and doing it any­way to pro­tect his fam­ily, Car­los is much more the ‘troubled-teen’ with a bad atti­tude, lured by the vio­lence and dan­ger of gang life. But, we do see his char­ac­ter grow and mature, after Kiara and her fam­ily prove there are peo­ple will­ing to stick by him, no mat­ter how badly he treats them.

I really, really liked Kiara — in some ways more than Brit­tany — just because I could relate to her more as a per­son. She is shy, aver­age look­ing and stut­ters when ner­vous. She lives in over large T-shirts and doesn’t care much about her appear­ance — the kind of girl who goes by qui­etly on the side­lines most of the time. But she also loves a chal­lenge, can hold her own against Car­los, gives as good as she gets, is true to her­self, is com­pas­sion­ate and is a car­ing, intel­li­gent young woman (who hap­pens to enjoy fix­ing cars). She was a pretty unique hero­ine and though she comes across as vul­ner­a­ble to begin with, as the story pro­gressed it became clear that she was actu­ally the stronger of the two. Kiara and Car­los have a qui­eter, less explo­sive romance than Alex and Brittany’s. They have their share of ban­ter and siz­zling scenes, but it isn’t as intense as there is far less keep­ing them apart. I found the attrac­tion between the two was well han­dled, though per­haps a lit­tle rushed.

It was also heart­en­ing to read about a close fam­ily (a rar­ity in YA fic­tion) and one who cared about Car­los and other ‘prob­lem’ kids, enough to offer him a home and attempt to help him make some­thing more of him­self. Kiara’s father is one of those rare people/characters who sees past the stereo­type, who actu­ally cares — and though his role in the story felt a lit­tle unre­al­is­tic at times (espe­cially towards the end), it was refresh­ing to read about some­one like this in YA fic­tion. Like Per­fect Chem­istry, though Rules of Attrac­tion is fore­most a love story, it con­tains some impor­tant mes­sages too.

Alex and Brit­tany both fea­ture in this book, but on the side­lines and we get to see them more as indi­vid­u­als rather than as a cou­ple. I warmed to Brit­tany even more, as she deals with Carlos’s scorn­ful atti­tude and makes it clear she is there for him and wasn’t going any­where, no mat­ter how badly he acted towards her.

The end­ing felt too rushed and far too eas­ily resolved which is a shame, and again we have another, slightly cheesy, epi­logue, which will irri­tate some read­ers but I enjoy these books for what they are, a feel-good read and I per­son­ally like how Elke­les brings every­thing back in a full cir­cle. Rules of Attrac­tion doesn’t have quite a same edge to it as Per­fect Chem­istry, but Elke­les sure knows how to write some damn good flir­ta­tious ban­ter, sex­ual ten­sion and ridicu­lously attrac­tive male leads, while avoid­ing the bodice-ripper trap many romance nov­els fall into.

To be hon­est, the Fuentes boys are the only rea­son you need to pick these books up — and luck­ily, the third book in the series, Chain Reac­tion, is set to come out this August.

Rec­om­mended Read­ing Age: 16+

Rat­ing: 8.5/10