I’ve never read anything by this author but I now feel the
need to get every single book she’s ever written because this book was just so
amazing in so many different ways. From
the characters, the settings, the situations everything was there. I can even completely see this as being a TV
show that’s for sure. There’s so much
going on and it was all beautifully written to keep you hooked from the very
beginning.
We meet three main characters that couldn’t be more
different from another and they all have their own specific issues, especially
with their significant others. You have
a girl from a broken home with a tough exterior and a tough attitude, another
who is a complete Susie homemaker churchgoer who always does what she is told
and lastly a proud lesbian who is really just trying to find a place to fit
in. Again, like I said, couldn’t be more
different from one another, but they are now roommates and learn to love and
help one another rather quickly. It’s
really beautiful seeing such different girls getting along so greatly when they
wouldn’t have expected it to begin with.
Each girl has their own story and their own breakup and situation,
I don’t want to tell too much because really you have to pick up this book, it’s
worth the read. But I have to say I don’t
know if it’s the tattoo and the blue eyes but Rion and Crash’s’ story is by far
my favorite of the three. Rion is just
someone I can relate to because she’s such a tough chick who does not have a
filter and that is completely me. And
who doesn’t love a pair of hot blue eyes staring at you, it’s as if they are
from another world sometimes. Trust is
an important thing in any relationship and this is undeniably their biggest
issue.
But then you have Amy and Matt, who I adore because they are
so sweet and innocent. Plus the red on
red is adorable. I love Rion’s nicknames
for Matt that’s for sure. You just have to read them, too funny. Anyway their preaching ways help each other
out, and Matt has got some great t-shirts too.
But you have to read about them.
Another great thing about them is their relationship is pure and Amy is
just trying to find herself, without anyone telling her exactly what it is she
should be doing.
Then there is Arielle who is the proud lesbian trying to
find love and trust that they too will be as open as she is about her
sexuality. Sometimes it’s just harder
for other people, but I loved reading her story about trying to fit in and find
love and trust as well.
Overall this book was an amazing read into the lives of
three very different people starting their lives in college and working towards
the real world. I loved every minute of
it. There were some really great moments between the three of them showing such
solidarity and love for one another, again really beautiful. There were also some wonderful moments
between the characters and their significant others as well, like I said this
book was an amazing read.
I have to mention the cover too, because if I saw this cover
in the store I would pick it up immediately and wonder what it was about. Super cute cover and very eye catching. GO
check this book out!
Excerpt:
Rion
“Oh my God,” Arielle moaned. “Pizza. You are the best.
Seriously.”
A smile twitched at the corners of Rion’s mouth. “See? Things
aren’t all bad.”
Now even Arielle cracked a smile. “It’s been pretty much the
worst day of my life, but pizza always makes things better. Seriously, thank
you.”
Yeah, me too.”
Arielle’s eyes went wide. “You got dumped too?”
“No, I just had to take a shit job I really didn’t want to
take.” Rion had stormed out of the Studio determined to find some other place,
any other place, to work. But all of them had online job applications that
asked whether she’d ever been convicted of a crime. The little voice at the
back of her head that said the Studio was the best opportunity she had was
right. Dammit.
Rion needed to change the subject before she got all melancholy.
That wouldn’t help anyone. “So which of these douchebag college guys do I have
to murder?” The words were out before she thought about what she meant by them.
Why did she give a shit about which Indiana Northern asshole had broken
Arielle’s heart? It seemed like the crying was over, and hopefully so was the
food-ordering. They could go about their lives going to different classes and
moving past each other from the door of their suite to the doors of their
rooms, and before they knew it, freshman year would be over.
But she still had some strange pull toward wanting to know.
Wanting to care.
“None of the guys. But a two-faced sorority girl would be good.”
Ah, lesbian romance drama. Fucking fabulous. In the group
home, Rion had seen more than a few gay girls making out one day and throwing
punches the next, and that shit was never pretty.
Still, she caught herself guarding her words. Caring what
Arielle would think of her. “Well, give me her stats and I won’t let her into
the Suite. You have my word.”
Arielle cracked another smile as she reached for a pizza box.
“Tall, willowy, straightened reddish-brown hair, wearing her sorority letters.
Fucking gorgeous. And full of herself. You know, the usual.”
“Done and done. If you have a picture we can hang it on the wall
and throw darts at it.”
But now the girl choked back a sob. “I have so many pictures.”
“Okay, okay. Too soon. Sorry.” Rion fumbled through the bags.
“Look. I have ice cream too. It’ll be okay.”
And then the door to Suite 17C flung open, and the previously
bubbly, bouncing, smiley Amy came in, her face dripping with tears and a total
fucking mess.
Arielle
Arielle had been just about to shove a bite of hot, cheesy
comfort food into her mouth when the door swung open. Shoulders shuddering, Amy
let the door slam behind her, and slumped against the wall. She slid down to
the floor in time with the tears sliding down her cheeks, her purse softly
thudding against the office-grade carpet a moment before her butt did.
The pizza dropped on the plate, leaving a hot smear of pizza
sauce on Arielle’s hand, which she absentmindedly wiped on her clean yoga
pants. She’d have to find the laundry room sooner rather than later, she
guessed.
“Jesus fuck,” Rion murmured, slowly taking steps back toward her
room
Amy gasped and whipped her head, with eyes wide with shock, over
to Rion.
“She’s really…Christian,” Arielle mumbled at Rion while she
moved across the room to slide her arm around Amy’s back and pulled her to
standing. “Come sit on the couch,” she said to the still-weeping girl. The haze
of the headache that her own tears had left behind minutes before still pounded
behind her eyes. If Arielle thought she’d looked bad, Amy multiplied that
tenfold. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”
Maybe she was called down to the lobby because there was bad
news from home. Maybe one of her parents had been in a car accident or
something. Arielle would lose her shit if anything happened to her mom, no
matter how much the woman could annoy her sometimes.
“He…he…he said he loved me, but…” Amy managed, gasping, before
she collapsed into tears again.
“Motherfucker.” Rion swore again, but when Arielle shot her
another scolding look, she shrugged and slumped into a chair, watching Amy, who
was beginning to calm down enough to hiccup instead of gasp.
“Oh, honey,” Arielle said, channeling her mom’s calming tone as
much as possible. Her hand hovered in the air above Amy’s back, uncertain
as to whether she should rub it like Amy had rubbed hers. A couple girls back
in high school had flinched any time Arielle’s hand came close to touching
their bra – she’d learned to be careful with touching girls.
But when Amy let her head fall onto Arielle’s shoulder, the
choice was thankfully made for her. Arielle put her arm around Amy’s back, and
squeezed her shoulder. “What did he say?” She asked, softly. Carefully. She
couldn’t repeat Rachel’s stupid excuses right now if she tried.
“He just said…everyone he had met had broken up with their
girlfriends when they got here…and he wanted to see other girls? I guess?
Because he prayed about it, and he’s pretty sure I’m the girl he’s supposed to
be with, but he just wants to be totally sure?” Her voice twisted higher on the
last few words, and she started to sob again.
“What is wrong with these nut-clutching, mansplaining dickheaded
assholes?” Arielle and Amy went quiet at Rion’s outburst. “Well, seriously!”
she said, throwing her hands in the air. “You,” she said, motioning to Amy,
“were obviously like about to get married, and you,” she pointed at Arielle,
“fucking transferred to this school to be with that dumb bitch.”
“She’s not a…” Arielle started, her stomach twisting
instinctively at anyone referring to Rachel that way.
“Oh but she is,” Rion said. “Nobody can know you’re together?
Suddenly lesbians are this horrible thing? Is she living in fucking 1994 or
something?”
Amy’s stomach pulled in as she gave a short, slight laugh, and
her mouth twitched up at the corners. Arielle had to admit she was right – Rion
was outspoken, but at least she was making this a little more bearable.
“And your guy. Who does he think he is? You’re obviously pretty,
and sweet, and the two of you had something really serious. And now he wants to
fuck other girls, just because he saw all the fresh Indiana Northern meat?”
Amy’s mouth dropped open, and she stared at Rion. “You think
he’s going to – I mean – do you think he’s wanting to make love to other
girls?”
Arielle shot a dagger-eyed glance at Rion, and quickly but
firmly shook her head.
“No…no,” Rion stammered, giving Arielle a panicked look. “I’m
sure he just wants to…you know. Kiss them and stuff?” she checked her response
with Arielle, who rolled her eyes at her when Amy wailed.
“Okay, look. Let’s just calm down, okay?” Arielle said in the
soothing voice again. She had definitely learned more than she’d thought. Mom
had Arielle’s back through a few crying sessions when she was fourteen and just
starting to come out at school. Ninth grade girls could be brutal in their
teasing, and Arielle had learned not to give a shit mostly by Mom teaching her
how to deal.
Teasing was one thing, and Rachel was another.
After a few quiet moments, while the girls waited for Amy to
start taking deep breaths again, Arielle put slices of pizza on napkins for
each of them. She handed one to Rion first, with a slight smile, then nudged
one down the coffee table in front of Amy’s face. “Eat,” Arielle said,
smoothing her hand over Amy’s long hair before she pulled it away and picked up
her own slice.
The girls ate in silence for several moments, and then Rion let
her napkin drop to the floor, half the piece of pizza still on it. “Listen,”
she said, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “Guys are assholes.
Girls too, I guess. I swear to God.”
Amy whimpered.
“It’s like they don’t know how to be decent human beings. Do you
know what happened to me, literally three weeks before I left to move here?”
Arielle and Amy waited for her to continue.
“I was with this guy, and he was cute, and fun, and really
really good in bed, and he just happened to sell pot on the side. And then I
fucking got stuck driving his car, with a trunkload of the shit. Nothing like
trying to explain to the cops that it’s not your pot and knowing they don’t
believe you.”
Arielle whispered “whoa,” and Amy’s eyes were the size of
saucers. “So,” Amy’s timid voice broke the silence. “I mean…weren’t you smoking
that stuff too? If he was? Or didn’t you at least know it was in there?”
“Of course you’d think that. Everyone else did. It makes sense.”
Rion scoffed. “But no. I wouldn’t touch the shit. My only real crime was
being stupid enough to drive the car without searching it first. Anyway, I had
to go to court. Got a ten thousand dollar fine. Lost all my federal loans.
Asshole completely fucked me over. ”
“So you broke up with him?” Amy asked quietly.
Rion scoffed, weaving her fingers together and staring down at
them. “Didn’t have to. When he saw me after I got out of court, he figured I
wanted to kill him. He was right. But it’s hard to kill someone that you’re
used to kissing, you know?” Now Rion’s voice had gone from hard to broken and
quiet.
Arielle shook her head. “You loved him, didn’t you?”
“Well,” Rion grumbled, “I wouldn’t say…I don’t know. Maybe.
Yeah. I lived in a state run group home for the last year and a half. He was
kind of the only person I had.” Rion stared down at her hands some more, and
Arielle thought she heard her sniffle, too. Clearly she was done with that
conversation, for now at least. They were all quiet for a very long few
seconds.
“Okay,” Arielle finally said, tossing her pizza down onto the
coffee table with a dull thump. “This is pathetic. We are pathetic.”
Yeah, she still felt completely devastated, like Rachel had
permanently poisoned the part of her that could feel happiness. But there was
another feeling too, the one that insisted that this was utter bullshit.
Just like Rion, she knew she was worth more than this. And from
what little she knew of Amy, and from what she could see of Rion, she knew the
same thing about them.
“Jesus, give her a minute,” Rion said, crossing over to the
chair next to Amy and sitting down. She looked the girl up and down, as though
she was wondering what to do with her. Then she reached into the bag, pulled
out a pint of ice cream, cracked the top off, and handed it to Amy, who took
it, looking lost. Then Rion mumbled, “Sorry,” and pulled a spoon out of the
bag, too. She barely had time to hold it out to Amy before the poor, sniffling
girl snatched it and started to dig in.
“Seriously,” Arielle said, watching her two roommates strike up
a camaraderie before her eyes. “People screw with us, and we cry and eat ice
cream? What the hell are we doing?”
Amy sniffled. “You guys are swearing a lot.”
Rion snorted and pulled another pint out of the bag.
“I’ll be right back,” Arielle said, pushing herself out of her
chair, “Be ready to hand one of those over to me.”
In her room, Arielle dug through one of the three huge duffels
she’d crammed in her dad’s trunk before the drive up to Northern. She was a
sucker for two things: color coding and office supplies, and even though she’d
be using her laptop for almost everything in classes, she’d stocked up on a few
cute notebooks and fancy pens. She found one that was absolutely perfect – a
composition style, so that pages couldn’t be torn out – and had three birds in
some artsy-collagey configuration on the front. She grabbed a pack of new gel
pens and stalked back into the common room.
“We are not going to let this happen again,” Arielle said.
“And we’re going to do that with a notebook and cutesy pens?”
Arielle glared at Rion, but Amy cracked a smile.
“We all know this is bullshit, right? Sorry, Amy -” Arielle said
as she wiggled her yoga-pantsed butt back over the cheap dorm furniture
upholstery.
“We all know our exes -” she swallowed – “totally screwed us
over. We know we didn’t deserve that, right?”
“And we’re never going to put up with anything close to it ever
again,” Rion said.
“Exactly,” Arielle said, willing certainty into her shaky voice.
Unfortunately, at this point, she promise she wouldn’t jump back into Rachel’s
arms and pick right back where they left off on their happily ever after, given
the chance.
But deep down, she also knew that that happily ever after had
been totally destroyed by whatever it was that made Rachel embarrassed to be
her girlfriend.
“Adam said…he said he thinks we belong together,” Amy’s voice
cracked as she fought to get some volume into it. “He just wants to be sure. So
probably, we’ll….”
“No,” Arielle interrupted, slamming her hand on the cover of the
notebook, then fiercely opening the cover and tearing the cap off the pen with
her teeth. “You will not be getting back together. I’m sorry, because I don’t
really know you at all, but I know that any guy who promises a girl forever and
then comes to college with her and then dumps her ass is not forever. He is not
The One. ”
How much was she talking about Amy, and how much was she talking
about herself?
Arielle shook her head. It didn’t matter. “Listen to me,”
she said, trying to infuse every word with conviction, “The three of us were
put in this Suite together for a reason. I know we were.”
Actually, Arielle had been put in the Suite because she was a
late transfer.
“My best friend backed out of our double last month,” Amy said.
“Decided to start at the community college close to home instead.”
Rion swallowed another bite of ice cream. “And I’m here because
-”
“Shut UP!” Arielle said, beginning to scribble furiously. “I’m
serious. We’re all here for a reason, and I’m going to tell you what it is
right now.” The ink from the green gel pen was especially shimmery, and it
pulled a spark of happiness through the darkness threatening to take over
Arielle’s whole experience at Northern. The words formed under her pen almost
by themselves, and when she finished writing, she held up the notebook for
the girls to see.
Amy blinked hard, clearing her eyes of the last of the tears,
and Rion let out an exasperated sigh as she leaned forward to read.
“The Broken Hearts’ Society of Suite 17C?” Rion read.
“Yep. We’ve all ended up on the wrong end of some really bad
breakups, and we’re having a hard time dealing. It’s true. And you know what
that means?”
“We’re pathetic?” Amy offered.
“Yes, okay.” Arielle rolled her eyes. “We’re pathetic, today.
That’s why we’re never going to let anything like that happen ever, ever again.
We’re going to have such an amazing, jerk-free year, that we’re going to make
our exes look like pathetic losers at the end of it. And we’re all going to
hold each other accountable.” Arielle swallowed down the doubt rising in her
chest. She doubted that gorgeous, confident, social butterfly Rachel could ever
look like a pathetic loser, but now that she’d given the whole speech, she owed
it to her roommates to at least consider it a possibility.
“So how are we supposed to do that?” Something like hope sparked
inside Arielle as she heard a hint of willingness in Rion’s question.
“We’re going to hold a meeting. Every other Sunday. Just like
this, with ice cream and pizza, but without the crying.”
“My mom only packed like a month’s worth of tissues anyway,” Amy
joked, finally letting a real smile creep onto her face.
“It’s only going to work if everyone’s in. We all have to help
each other.” Arielle looked straight at Amy, who swallowed hard, then nodded.
She moved her eyes to Rion. She stabbed her plastic fork into the ice cream,
taking a long time to twist out a scoop, then shove it in her mouth, then
swallow. She looked up at the girls, letting her gaze shift from one to the
other. “I’d probably have to listen to you girls talking about exes and crushes
and dating and love no matter what, right?”
“Right,” Arielle nodded, keeping her face solemn.
“Fine,” Rion said, passing a pint of ice cream to Arielle as
promised. “How’s this going to work?”
“Concentrate on your ice cream,” Arielle mumbled, trying to
catch hold of the stream of words jumping up in her head like magic. She
flipped open to the second page of the book and wrote so furiously her hand
ached when she was done. The notebook made a hefty thud when she dropped it,
open-faced, on the floor right next to the pizza.
![RightNextDoor Final[6]](http://www.inkslingerpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/RightNextDoor-Final6.jpg)
A.J. Pryor lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters. If not home writing, you can find her at the beach, the yoga studio or the soccer field with her girls. An avid reader of contemporary romance, new adult and young adult novels, her Kindle is always within reach. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
