City Love - Susane Colasanti

City Love by Susane Colasanti
Genre: YA Realistic Fiction

Blurb (on back of book): Sadie, Darcy, and Rosanna are living together in New York City the summer before their freshman year of college begins. With no parents, no rules, and an entire city to explore, these three girls are on the verge of the best summer of their lives.
Sadie is a native New Yorker. She is hopeful, romantic, and an eternal optimist who is ready to find her soul mate. Then she meets her dream boy: cute, funny, and quirky in all the right ways. The chemistry between them is unreal. Could he be the one?
Darcy is a free spirit from SoCal with rebellious tendencies and unlimited financial resources. Moving to New York City is just another adventure for her. Darcy wants this summer to be all about boy adventures—nothing serious. But how much fun is too much?
Rosanna leaves Chicago for NYC so she can put her past behind her and reinvent herself. The only thing standing in her way is the grand total of seventy-three cents she has saved. Then she meets a guy who wants to show her the glamorous side of New York—a side that she would never get to experience on her own. If Rosanna doesn't resist, she may find herself in city love.
Told from alternating points of view, City Love captures the moments in each girl's life when everything is thrilling, amazing, and terrifying all at once . . . in a way it will never be again.

MY OPINION: **

I was so tempted to DNF this book, but since I have not read a book in FOREVER, and it's fairly short, I forced myself to finish it.

I don't know what exactly it was that made me not fall in love with this book. It was a very generic plot that I was fairly interested in, but for some reason, I did not enjoy it. I couldn't read it for more than an hour at a time before getting bored.

The characters were bland. We have our three main girls, Rosanna, Darcy, and Sadie, who are all very cut and dry. I felt like they all were molded from very specific stereotypical girls and then changed just a bit to try to seem unique. They're all roommates in college but they felt so immature and similar to each either.

Sadie has lived in New York for her entire life and has always dreamed of becoming an urban designer, I believe. She also has always dreamed of meeting her soulmate in the most romantic way. She even has a sign above her bed saying "Right around the corner" because she really believes that her mans might be anywhere.

And lo and behold, he IS.

Austin was so perfect that we all knew that it was way too good to be true. After ONE MINUTE of meeting, they're both transfixed. Over the next day, they meet and go out on a date about one day after they met. They claim to be in love after ONE WEEK and I was just sitting there like, no honey, this ain't it.

Okay, here's my thing. Telling somebody you love them should be genuine. And I get that this is insta-love or whatever, but really, I would not be happy if somebody told me they loved me about .83907242 seconds after we met. Like, I feel like it's not as genuine. How can you truly know that?

And obviously, by the end, it all goes downhill. I didn't like their ending because it was all so sudden and everything happened in about half a page. He has a wife?? What?

Darcy has just been dumped by her boyfriend and wants to spend her summer having flings and one-night-stands, just living her best life. I didn't like her character at all because she seems to have no respect for herself. She also often put down everybody's relationship just because ONE thing went wrong in her life. And yes, she ends up being right but she's also so rude. Like, "OH THEY WON'T LAST" and such. That's not a good friend. She also plays with the feelings of a truly nice boy, Jude. I didn't like her at all and her ending just seems even worse.

Rosanna by far had the best relationship and character arc. When we first meet her, she's incredibly shy and standoffish almost, but by the end, she's more open and accepting. I also liked her relationship with Donovan, even though there are way too many secrets between them. She's not the richest person alive and often talks about counting every penny, while her boyfriend is incredibly wealthy. I thought that their relationship was cute and the ending wasn't incredibly fake.

The ending was blsafhouahfoiwjckjbv. SOOO many things happened, mostly in preparation for the next book. This whole thing could have been a standalone and it would have been so much better. The ending felt rushed and fake and unrealistic. Everybody's relationships start to fall apart for the most random reasons. I accidentally saw Sadie's ending before I actually finished the book and reading the actual book, the clues that the author dropped were not the best because of how subtle they were, though at the same time were jarringly obvious.

I don't know.

The writing was simplistic, which I did appreciate because it made the book go by faster and I was able to actually finish a book. I would recommend this book to readers looking for a short, romantic insta-love read.

Main Character: Sadie, Darcy, Rosanna
Sidekick(s): Austin?, Jude, D
Villain(s): Lying, misunderstandings, etc

Realistic Fiction Elements: All of this is possible in real life.