Review "Knowing Jack"

Title: Knowing Jack
Author: Rachel Curtis
First Published: January 7th 2014
Pages: 165 (the Arc)

I am not a slut, although I’ve been called one often enough. Yeah, I spent three months screwing one of my college professors, but I was crazy about the guy. Then he broke up with me.

I am not a bitch, although people like to say I am. I kept our relationship secret. I’m not responsible for telling the university administrators about it, but a lot of students still blame me for getting their favorite professor fired. 

This is what I am. I’m Chloe. I’m a twenty-year-old art history major. Kind of shy, although I pretend not to be. Stubborn enough to stay here for my senior year, even though everyone hates me.

And I’m stuck with Jack. He calls me “Princess,” but I’m not a princess either.

I have a feeling that, after this, I won't ever get another review book. That being said, enjoy.

ARC provided through NetGalley in exchange of an honest review

 Plot: Ever since everyone found out about her affair with Carter, Chloe’s world seriously shifted off its axes. After all, while people might particulary not care that you’re sleeping with their favorite professor, there may be a little problem when the same professor is getting fired because of this. Even before the entire ordeal, Chloe wasn’t the most popular girl in college, but now she can safely say that she isn’t in anyone’s graces. Moreover, someone is sending her death threats and her fellow students put up a horrible tumblr page, whose entire purpose seems to be ridiculing her. Her parents want their daughter to finish college elsewhere, while Chloe doesn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction of chasing her away. But nothing she says can convince her mom and dad that the threats she receives are just bad jokes, so now she’s stuck with Jack. Annoying, enigmatic, sinfully good-looking, her bodyguard turns out to have his own personal issues, that might just complicate the hot and cold relationship they built on the uncertain ground of professionalism.
  
Personal Opinion:

• ·         Writing style: It was fairly simple, typical for New Adult literature. There tend to be repetitions and, at times, the scenes drag on, without influencing much the main course of the story. Overall, while there’s definitely place for improving, it is not disturbing, and, for the most part, suits the pace of the story.
• ·         Characters: Ok, I’m just going to say it (write it, whatever): Chloe and Jack perfectly embody the New Adult cliché. I’m sorry, since I was hoping this would be one of the NA stories that pleasantly surprise me, like Wait for You or Easy, but while this characters started as OK people ( maybe not my favorites, but I could roll with them), my opinion went downhill pretty fast. Let’s start with Chloe. Oh God, Chloe. Somewhere around page fifty, I was feeling the constant need to slap some sense into her. She basically is a little girl haunted by the destroying of the perfect image she always felt compelled to have. The thing is, while she has this compulsion of appearing perfect, there’s nothing in Chloe’s past that justifies it. Her parents are nice, her friends are mentioned during the story, she has never been bullied, there’s no explanation altogether. I feel like she doesn’t have a strong and convincing background. Even her relationship with Carter isn’t detailed enough. There are hints at it, some memories, but I wanted to know what happened, how they were discovered. And mostly, I wanted to know if there was more to their thing than sex. She sounds like she had some feelings, but she pretty much is over it by the time the book starts, so it’s uncertain. Also, her thoughts often contradict her actions. She constantly changes her mind. At the beginning of the book, she’s on a man-fast for the year and doesn’t really care about Jack. Forty pages or so later, she’s half-crazy with desire for him. I also found really annoying the strong-girl act she has going on in her head. If she had acted half like that all the time, not just with Jack, things might have been different. Now, Jack? Jack’s no better. He’s the tortured male character who thinks he’s no good, but can’t stay away. He hurts her by trying to protect her of himself, he can’t let go of his past before she assures him it wasn’t his fault, he is a drama queen in the making, honestly. They both constantly drove me up the wall and not in the good way. Needless to say, there’s not much going on in regard to character development.
• ·         Plot development: Kind of shabby. Unless you count the sex. Now there was a lot of that going on. I had some hope because of the premise, but it worked out differently than I had expected.

Favorite quote: “First tell me this.” “What?” “Why do you have naked babies on your underwear?”

Recommend: I’m sorry, but not really. If you are into New Adult, you should give it a chance. The high rating on Goodreads is proof that people enjoyed it. But it wasn’t the book for me and it certainly didn’t live up to the expectations.