Review: Cali Boy by Charli Meadows

Cali Boy by Charli Meadows
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have to review this one in two parts.

4 stars: I really enjoyed the beginning, probably around the whole first half. The growly protective Finn parts, the very excellent grumpy-sunshine dynamic, the instalust obsession that hit just right…it was so lovely! I definitely liked that Finn was trying to be grumpy and a jerk to Oliver in the beginning and managed it for like 3 sentences before caving. That was super cute.

I also was here for the Gossip Girl style rich kid prep school, dramatic high schoolers doing things that aren’t normal etc. Who cares that’s entertaining. I can roll with it.

Unfortunately the fun times didn’t carry through.

2 stars: The growly protectiveness kind of got lost some. It was still there, but I guess it wasn’t …enough? Am I too demanding? maybe. whatever i wanted more possessiveness to continue through

There wasn’t a coherent plot thread through this whole book. In the beginning, it didn’t matter to me much, but since I wasn’t feeling the intensity/all consuming relationship in the second half, that couldn’t carry the book by itself either.

The two present plot threads - Evil Bullies and Family Problems - were both fairly large issues, but didn’t see a lot of development.

Evil Eric and Hazel didn’t make much sense anyway. Hazel is being jealous, I guess. What was Eric’s deal? Did I miss that in my skimming? I mean they went bonkers over it and I do not know what was driving that. This was bizarre and OTT and yet underdeveloped.

The family problems thread was not really much of a thread. Finn struggled, and his father was a jerk, but it was kind of just solved in a single conversation at the end. His father wasn’t even around for most of the book, so it felt tacked on, and not a cohesive arc.

Evil Eric was more present as a plot thread, but he didn’t make sense so it didn’t serve to tie anything together. He was just chaotic mean. There’s gotta be some grains of reasoning, even in OTT plots! Otherwise they’re just ??? and not fun to read.

Overall, I liked the beginning, there is potential here. It lost its forward momentum when it went all in with the bonkers nonsensical plot. It's skewing more towards 2.5 stars, but the beginning was sweet so I'll call it 3 stars.

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