Resisting the Rebel by Lisa Brown Roberts Pages: 235
Published by Entangled, Crush on July 25, 2016
Genres: Young Adult, contemporary, Romance
Source: eARC from Publisher
Disclaimer: This book contains a villain pretending to be a hero, a hero pretending to be a villain, a disco-dancing heroine, two overprotective sidekicks, a little bit of bad language, and a whole lot of swoony kissing.
Spirit committee leader Mandy Pennington is secretly in love with her best friend, Gus, but when he hooks up with her archenemy at a party, she decides to win him over once and for all. She just doesn’t know how. But who better to help than hot loner Caleb Torrs?
Caleb’s got his own problems, but when he sees Mandy pining over Gus at a party, he thinks she’s finally smoked the spirit stick and lost her mind. Maybe he has, too, because he just asked Mandy to be his fake girlfriend.She’ll get her loser friend’s attention, and he’ll get his stalker ex off his back.It’s a win-win.
But soon one fake date blends into the next and before he knows it, he actually wants to kiss Mandy. For real. Too bad their plan is working, and Gus is finally noticing the one girl Caleb just might be falling for…
Resisting the Rebel is a young adult contemporary romance by author Lisa Brown Roberts. It is a fake relationship trope story. I have seen so many of these this year, that even though I love them so much, I can’t help but compare them to one another. Resisting the Rebel is a book that I almost gave up on. I would say, for about the first 20% of the story or so, I really wasn’t liking this story. I just kept thinking to myself that the characters were a little too over the top. They were all cliches, which doesn’t normally bother me, but they were each just too much. And because I have read so many fake boyfriend/girlfriend stories, I couldn’t help but feel like this one didn’t measure up to the others. But then…Resisting the Rebel really started to pick up. I ended up enjoying this one, much to my surprise. I still didn’t love it as much as some other fake relationships books I have read this year, but it turned out to be much better than I was initially expecting.
I liked Caleb pretty much from the jump. I don’t know why he was classified as a bad guy, because right from page one he was helping Mandy out. I think he is really just a big old teddy bear. Mandy on the other hand is like a tiny tornado. She made me dizzy just listening to her. Eventually she grew on me but it took some time. She was over the top hippie dippy, and over the top with everything, really. But I will say one thing about her…she acts her age. I had to keep reminding myself that she was only 16. And one of the things that I ended up enjoying the most about Resisting the Rebel is the amount of character growth that occurs from start to finish in this book. By the end of the book, not only did I understand Mandy better, but Mandy understood herself better, and that was kind of cool to see.
The romance between Caleb and Mandy was really cute. it started out as a means to an end for both of them. For Mandy it was to catch the eye of her longtime crush, who was being courted by the resident mean girl, and for Caleb it was to get his crazy ex off his back. Once their fake relationship started, the book became exponentially cuter. I had a lot of fun with the story from this point on. And the summary is right…there are a lot of swoon kiss moments.
Bottom line: Resisting the Rebel is a book that got off to a very rocky start for me, but ultimately ended up being a good read. It wasn’t my favorite fake relationship book that I have read in 2016, and it does feature a lot of cliches, but as long as you are ok with that, Resisting the Rebel is a cute romance.
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Eva @ All Books Considered
Great review! Glad this turned around from the rocky start and was cute!