Ladies (and the gents who peruse our romance reviews, rock on) I have finally read a Milan. And it was okay. I will also state before anyone gets worried, I have already downloaded The Duchess War and shall be starting that shortly, but for now I read one.
Trade Me falls into a new genre category it appears, called New Adult. It is more saucy than say a Young Adult love story, but nowhere near as saucy as I require from my grown up romances. I don’t require erotica or any such (although, sometimes funsies), but thinking back on it, the 20 year olds have bland “funky times” is not surprising. Anywho, I’m getting ahead of myself…
This is the story of Tina Chen and Blake Reynolds. Tina is a scholarship student while double majoring at Berkeley, where Blake is heir to an Apple-like company starting classes a few years behind. They meet in a gen-ed class when Tina gets in an argument that Blake, with all of his wealth and fame, doesn’t understand her life. From this Blake decides that he wants to know how the other half lives and convinces Tina to trade lives with him for the rest of the semester. Events of a variety of kinds ensue, from family dramas to eating disorders to finally the previously mentioned “funky times”.
And so this is the issue I have with so many young adult and now I guess new adult books. Yes, I remember when I was a little sh*t, and thought I had the world all figured out. We all did. But there is a difference between that, and the shrew that is Tina, at 20, telling Blake exactly how her life is going to go. She has it entirely worked out. It’s so frustrating, especially as I get older and my patience gets even shorter, to hear about children knowing everything. I’m what most consider a “grown up” and I think that means, you’ve learned that you have absolutely nothing figured out and you’re just making it up as you go along. So reading about obnoxious children (which 20 is these days…) just isn’t my cup of tea anymore.
And the funny thing is, I still gave it 3 stars, because for all of my annoyance, it was well written. Ms. Milan is a charismatic, witty, fun writer, and I was quite impressed that while I didn’t like either character I still enjoyed her book overall. So my recommendation of this is pretty tepid unless you’re a Milan completist (I know you’re out there) or into the “New Adult” genre. Onto another, hopefully better, Milan!
