Author: Liz Reinhardt
Format: Netgalley, egalley
Publisher: Random House Children's Publishers UK
Release date: December 20th, 2012
Date Read: March 15th through March 17th, 2013
Rating: ✭✭
What happens when you fall in love with the perfect guy... twice... in one day?
Brenna Blixen spent her freshman year homeschooling in Denmark; now that she’s back in the States, she’s determined to make her sophomore year unforgettable. And by unforgettable, she imagined awesome classes, fun friendships, and maybe a little romance.
What she got was a whole lot of romance, and all at once.
The same day that dark, brooding Saxon Maclean charmed her with his killer good looks and whip-smart wit, Jake Kelly stole her breath away with his heart-wrenching smile and intelligent, thoughtful focus.
But Saxon is a proud player who makes it clear that he doesn’t know why he can’t get Brenna off of his mind and out of his system, and Jake’s sweet and humble attitude hides a secret past life that might be more darker and more complex than Brenna’s willing to handle.
Complicating the matter is the fact that Saxon and Jake were once best friends and are now arch-enemies... and the more Brenna finds out about their connection to each other, the more intrigued and worried she becomes.
Between keeping the peace with her lovingly over-protective parents, designing t-shirts for her high school’s rising punk band, keeping up her grades in both academic and technical high school, and running the track like a maniac, Brenna has enough to worry about with out juggling two guys who make her heart thud and drive her crazy all at once.
She has to make a choice. But how can she when giving her heart to one of them might mean breaking the other’s?
Brenna Blixen spent her freshman year homeschooling in Denmark; now that she’s back in the States, she’s determined to make her sophomore year unforgettable. And by unforgettable, she imagined awesome classes, fun friendships, and maybe a little romance.
What she got was a whole lot of romance, and all at once.
The same day that dark, brooding Saxon Maclean charmed her with his killer good looks and whip-smart wit, Jake Kelly stole her breath away with his heart-wrenching smile and intelligent, thoughtful focus.
But Saxon is a proud player who makes it clear that he doesn’t know why he can’t get Brenna off of his mind and out of his system, and Jake’s sweet and humble attitude hides a secret past life that might be more darker and more complex than Brenna’s willing to handle.
Complicating the matter is the fact that Saxon and Jake were once best friends and are now arch-enemies... and the more Brenna finds out about their connection to each other, the more intrigued and worried she becomes.
Between keeping the peace with her lovingly over-protective parents, designing t-shirts for her high school’s rising punk band, keeping up her grades in both academic and technical high school, and running the track like a maniac, Brenna has enough to worry about with out juggling two guys who make her heart thud and drive her crazy all at once.
She has to make a choice. But how can she when giving her heart to one of them might mean breaking the other’s?
Pre-review:
While going through the review for DOUBLE CLUTCH, I came upon a review that compares DOUBLE CLUTCH to BEAUTIFUL DISASTER. Before I actually go into my review, I'd like to say that there is absolutely no comparison.
Travis is an awful volatile person who manipulates Abby. He's emotionally unstable, clingy, controlling, self absorbed, and he likes to beat up guys who look at his girlfriend the wrong way. Neither of the love interests in DOUBLE CLUTCH could be called that, unless you count Jake who started acting like that by the end of the book.
Review:
It seems as if I have been confined to play the part of the black sheep. While conformity is always worse, it does get lonely being the only one who doesn’t love a book.
To all the 1,651 five and four star ratings, there are a few people who don’t like this book but we are few and far between.
I do see where the fans of DOUBLE CLUTCH come from. This is a pretty well done New Adult book with a (mostly) likable main character and a cute romance, which is more than I can say for most NA books.
DOUBLE CLUTCH was meant to be a book that tells people not to be afraid to show sexuality. It’s very pro-intimacy. However I, like others, found this to extremely hypocritical because of the blatant double standards. It seems as though the rampant slut shaming undid all the positive messages.
One scene towards the end was especially bad. As I can’t share every horrible quote from this scene, I will show two of the worst:
I was being taunted by a corset-wearing, gum-cracking hoe with straw for hair.
I was practically deafened by the combined hissing of a dozen rejected hussies.
There are so many things wrong with this. I can’t.
These “hussies” and “hoes” were previously described as “scantily-clad” and “backstabbing hooker-want-to-bes”. Brenna had no background information about them but from looking at what they were wearing, she concluded that they had to be backstabbing hookers.
They were also described as “hissing and clawing” (yes, hissing was used twice) and “hoochie-looking”.
I should stop talking about slut shaming (even though I haven’t even covered how Brenna is the good one because she doesn’t want to have sex) so I will.
Characters
Despite everything I talked about already, Brenna is actually a fairly good character. For once, I can actually see why the love interest likes the main character, even if his level of absolute adoration is a bit out there.
Brenna is bubbly and cute. One of my biggest peeves with heroines is when they adore classic literature because it’s often only added to make them seem smart. Even though Brenna loved classic lit, I found her genuinely intelligent.
Brenna was definitely the reason I kept reading the book.
Jake was very annoying because he was the “good one”. His personality entirely revolved around how the other love interest was the “bad one”. For most of the book, he was sweet and cute to a nauseating extent.
But towards the end, he turned into one of those guys who pick a fight with everyone. Jake got into at least three fights with Saxon, the other love interest. The fights often started because Saxon was talking to Brenna.
He was just talking to Brenna and then without warning Jake punches in the face.
Dude, why? He was talking to Brenna. He didn’t do anything!
Saxon, in my opinion, was the better man. Granted, he was obsessed with Brenna, but honestly both of them were. At least Saxon didn’t beat guys up! While I didn’t like him for the longest time (because he was controlling and a stalker), I sort of warmed up to him.
I’m not really sure whether a controlling stalker is better than a controlling fighter but at least Saxon wasn’t bland and lifeless.
Plot and Writing
Plot
As for plot, DOUBLE CLUTCH was about Brenna trying to make it through high school. This was another purely character driven romance book. There was no central plot, but that was to be expected.
Writing
The writing had its flaws and its strengths.
Reinhardt is very good with dialogue. The conversations between the characters felt very realistic. They weren’t stilted or fragmented. I really enjoyed the character interaction in the book.
Conversely, there were many typos and grammatical mistakes which made me really annoyed. I do not think it is because this is an ARC copy as this is a republish.
Likes and Dislikes
Likes
- character interaction
- dialogue
- Brenna
Dislikes
- characters
- Jake
- sexism and slut shaming
Conclusion
DOUBLE CLUTCH is actually a pretty good NA book compared to the rest of the mini genre but compared to a normal YA book, it falls short in a lot of categories. I can’t really recommend this book but I probably will read the second one.
Lisbeth is an American teenager who enjoys blowing shit up in videogames and discussing decapitation in great detail. She's also obsessed with Oceana, but you're not supposed to know that.
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