Friday, August 22, 2014

Book Spotlight and Review: Hard Knox by Nicole Williams

HARD KNOX
A New Series by NYT Bestselling Author Nicole Williams



The Outsider Chronicles, #1
New Adult/Adult Contemporary
Released August 12, 2014



Knox Jagger. The name inspires resent in every male at Sinclair University, want in every female, and contempt in Charlie Chase.

Charlie can be summed up in three words: independent, independent, and independent. To Charlie, Knox epitomizes everything that’s wrong with college males: prolific one-night stands, drunken senseless fights, and a body that hints at prioritizing gym time over study time.

As an up-and-coming writer for Sinclair University’s newspaper, Charlie’s tasked with getting to the bottom of who’s been dropping little white pills into girls’ drinks at parties. In an ocean of All-American boys sporting polo shirts and innocent smiles, Knox is the obvious suspect. As evidence piles up against the bad boy of Sinclair, Charlie becomes more and more certain it isn’t Knox. But when her drink is dosed at a party and she wakes up on Knox’s couch the next morning, Charlie’s left with more questions than answers when it comes to Knox Jagger.

How can Charlie ever hope to uncover the truth behind a guy so closed off he’s become . . .

Hard Knox.






My Thoughts:

Overall, I think this was a nice book. It had a good storyline, interesting characters, and moved along at a steady pace. It just wasn't spectacular. The thing that made this book for me was the character of Knox Jagger. He took bad boy to a different level, but still, he was inherently good inside. His backstory, when it comes out, is incredibly heart-wrenching and I just can't even imagine what it would've been like to actually go through that. So to see him work through his problems was just a punch to the gut. Charlie, on the other hand, tended to annoy me. She bordered on self-righteous with her tee shirt slogans and her attitude toward people, mostly men (the way she categorized people was kind of belittling), and the way she tossed her knowledge around like she's the only one who had it. Sometimes, I just wanted to slap her or tell her to 'get on with it already' when she rambled on about her views - and, man, did she have a lot of them! How these two actually ended up together - and how he didn't shake her to get her to stop - is beyond me, but somehow, it worked for them. Surprisingly, the character I liked the least was her professor, Neve, who was a raging bitch about her views and I think this is where plenty of Charlie's might have been cultivated. Once Neve gets an idea in her head, it's hard to shake it out and she will do anything to push her agenda, even obtain juvenile records that are supposed to be sealed to prove a point. She saw the picture one way and wasn't willing to look at it another, or give Knox the benefit of the doubt. She convicted him with circumstantial evidence, and for no good reason; she just didn't like him, so of course she was willing to believe the absolute worst about him and not want to see him in any other light. When Charlie tries to show her a different take on the so-called evidence against him, Neve kind of turns on her and basically accuses her of being blinded by lust for him. As for the story itself, it was interesting and although I kind of guessed 'whodunit' early on, I still enjoyed how they went about proving it. All in all, it was a good read and I would recommend it for lovers of this genre.



About the Author

I’m the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of the CRASH series (HarperTeen, S&S UK), LOST & FOUND series, UP IN FLAMES (S&S UK), The EDEN TRILOGY, and a handful of others. I write stories about everyday kinds of people who find themselves in extraordinary kinds of situations. I tell love stories with happy endings because I believe in making the world a better place, and that’s one tiny way I can make it so. I’m one of those people who still believe in true love and soul mates, and would rather keep my head in the clouds any day over having my feet firmly on the ground.





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