Review: Chasing Nikki by Lacey Weatherford

Chasing Nikki by Lacey Weatherford
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Goodreads summary:


Chase Walker used to be a good kid—charming, athletic, and with a bright future ahead, but that was before travesty struck his life, sinking him into deep despair. Caught up in a world of drugs and alcohol, he doesn’t notice time slipping away until he’s arrested for underage drinking one night.

Fed up with watching her son destroy his life, Chase’s mom relocates him to live in a small ranching community with his ex-military grandfather. Chase is far from happy about the situation until he meets, Nikki, the cute cheerleader who won’t give football players like him the time of day.

Chase enjoys a good challenge though and sets out to claim Nikki for his own. He soon discovers she’s more than a pretty face—she’s a balm to his troubled spirit also. But when tragedy strikes Nikki’s life too, suddenly Chase finds himself put to the ultimate test. Can he trust Nikki, and all that she’s taught him? Will it be enough?

My review:


There won't be much to this review - mostly because the majority of the reasoning behind its 2-star rating is a massive spoiler. As I'm late to the party on this book, it's possible that the secret isn't so secret anymore, but I'm not going to be the one to spoil it for someone else.

Suffice to say, I'm seriously rethinking my stance on not reading reviews before reading the book and I'm very happy I got this book on a day amazon offered it for free. There are reasons I read the genre I do...and one of those reasons is to avoid books that end the way this one did.

The two stars come from the first 2/3 of the book and Chase's deliberate pursuit of Nikki - it was adorably told and I loved the way Chase was with her, adorkably persistent. And I loved that while there was some lingering douche in Chase, the inconsistency in it showed just how much of it was artifice.

And I loved not only the way he plowed his hand into Jeremy's face...and the way the principal wanted the *whole* story.

Surprisingly, not all of my issues were with The Event. I also had problems with Chase's instalove for Nikki - he got pretty damned serious about her pretty damned quick, especially for someone still using chemical and alcoholic escapism to cope. Then there was the timing of the story itself. Namely, the huge jump months in time. That was seriously disconcerting and I had to check page locations to see if I'd somehow got a glitchy copy.

I'll be skipping the second book in the series for one reason - for all the rush, she sold me on the package in this book as being One True and that makes it hard for me to suddenly say "oh...*this* is the one true, huh? Okay. No prob."