Undeclared

(Woodlands #1)

Author: Jen Frederick

Publisher: Jen Frederick

Release Date: 4/28/13

Genre: New Adult

Source: Provided by author

Description

For four years, Grace Sullivan wrote to a Marine she never met, and fell in love. But when his deployment ended, so did the letters. Ever since that day, Grace has been coasting, academically and emotionally. The one thing she’s decided? No way is Noah Jackson — or any man — ever going to break her heart again.

Noah has always known exactly what he wants out of life. Success. Stability. Control. That’s why he joined the Marines and that’s why he’s fighting his way — literally — through college. Now that he’s got the rest of his life on track, he has one last conquest: Grace Sullivan. But since he was the one who stopped writing, he knows that winning her back will be his biggest battle yet.

This is a mature New Adult book. I see that it is classified as YA - not sure how to change that - but I wanted to be clear that it has explicit love scenes in the story.

Review

I’m not sure yet how I feel about this New Adult genre. I enjoy it ok but the characters are a bit too young for me and sometimes they are too close to YA, which I'm not a big fan of, that I just don’t enjoy the story at all. ;) I’ve managed to read a few different NA books so far and of those few this one was my favorite one. I actually enjoyed this one a lot more than any of the others and I plan to continue reading this series and this author in the future.  She managed to keep it young and light mostly but for me it read like a regular contemporary romance and that I really liked! I didn’t feel like I was reading about teenagers like I did with the other NA books I've read.

Noah and Grace start off by just writing letters back and forth, this started by Grace for a high school project she did writing to someone in the military. (I LOVED reading their letters back and forth! It made it sweeter for me.) But then Noah stopped writing after Grace revealed her feelings for him and kind of blew any chance he had with her. Or so Grace says, Noah has other ideas. Now he is there attending where she is going to college and he wants her to be his and he’ll do pretty much whatever it takes to get her.

It was really sweet while Noah was pursuing Grace! Lots of aww! moments. And I didn’t blame her for being reluctant but there were times I just wanted to scream at Grace because the guy was working hard to win her back. Though, I guess he did kind of deserve it! Even so, she eventually comes around and all is well.

I wasn't a big fan of Grace's friend Lana, she is VERY negative and I kind of wish we had learned a bit more about that but I have a feeling we will be seeing much more of her later so maybe we'll find out then. I loved Noah’s friends! All the guys, especially Bo though. He is hilarious and I’m excited for more of him in the future!!! Heck, I'm excited for all of the guys! The are all so different, it should be interesting to see what happens with them all.

I really really enjoyed this book! It’s a straight up normal low drama romance, very easy to read. Great for a summer day! I honestly wasn’t sure how I would like it but once I started that very first page I couldn’t put it down until I read to the very last page.  This story is fun and sweet and hot and all things in between and best of all there’s more to come! I can not wait for Bo’s story! Seriously, the guy is very entertaining. I’m anxious to see what kind of girl knocks his socks off! I have a guess who but we will see! ;)