Wait for You (Wait for You, #1)

by J. Lynn and Jennifer L. Armentrout

The New York Times number 1 New Adult bestseller

Some things are worth waiting for...

Travelling thousands of miles from home to enter college is the only way nineteen-year-old Avery Morgansten can escape an event that changed her life forever. All she needs to do is keep her head down - the one thing she didn't plan on was capturing the attention of the only guy who could shatter her defences.

Cameron Hamilton is six feet and three inches of swoon-worthy hotness. She knows she needs to stay away from him, but Cam is everywhere, with his charm, his banter, and that dimple that's just so... so lickable. Getting involved with him is dangerous, but ignoring their simmering tension is impossible...

When Avery starts receiving threatening emails and phone calls, she realises that someone from her past is refusing to let her go. When the devastating truth comes out, will Cam be there to help her or will he be dragged down with her?

• ISBN10: 0062294776
• ISBN13: 9780062294777
• Publish Date: 18 September 2013 (first published 2 April 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: William Morrow
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[Berls]

If it weren't for my surgery, I think I would have finished this book much quicker. Every time I sat down to read it before surgery I was sucked in and put it down under protest. After surgery it was still good - but medicated and uncomfortable, nothing held my attention that long, even if I stayed awake, which I normally didn't.

The relationship between Avery and Cam is really great. It's a slow burn romance, with lots of anticipation and frustration as Avery stumbles through her uncertainties and fears, and Cam patiently waits for her *sigh* He's everything a male hero should be (in this kind of book at least). I really enjoyed the friendships and family dimension as well.

This book does deal with rape and I think it did it well. It sucks to see parents in a villainous role, but their portrayal is believable and gives great commentary on our victim-shaming rape culture.

I look forward to reading the other books in the series, I think I know who the focus will shift to for each book (there are three, I believe) and I'm excited for their romances.

[Leigha]

A reserved woman meets the man of her dreams in this sweet New Adult romance.

After reading the unhealthy Ugly Love this year, I decided to re-read a New Adult romance I actually enjoyed. Cameron and Avery's courtship is utterly adorable. Both characters are struggling to let go of their pasts in order to embrace their futures. Avery by far has more emotional baggage than Cameron, but he's got his own issues. As the novel progresses, they grow as individuals and as a couple. Their growth is not always easy, but it's always with a purpose.

The friendships in this novel also have a place in my heart. I think it's so important for people to have relationships outside of their romantic partners. Avery and Cameron both have a core group of friends that support them and their needs. If anything, I wish we had gotten more friendship moments than romantic moments.

tl;dr A sweet romance focused on character growth and friendships.

[Ashley]

Second read:

I liked this a lot less the second time around. :/ More like 3 stars.

- I was really put off by Cam calling Avery "sweetheart" from the moment they met. I'd be really uncomfortable with someone calling me that from day one.

- I noticed several typos, which was kind of a bummer.

- This time I didn't really understand why Cam was so obsessed with Avery. At the beginning she didn't really do much to be interesting, and yet for some reason Cam was so taken with her. I guess I was less excited about the "playboy falls for quiet, virgin, plain good girl who is actually gorgeous" trope.

- And in general I just felt like I had less patience with everything. I did a lot more skimming and didn't feel as invested.

This is probably a weird thing to say, but I also felt like despite this being "new adult", it had a very young feel to it. I think it was all the language like "swoon-worthy". I don't know... it just felt very young to me, I can't even really describe why.

======================================

First read:



Nose Graze — Young Adult book reviews

4.5 Stars

The goal: a good romance book.

The plan: read for an hour (starting at 11:30pm).

The result: up until 4am finishing the book.

On the surface, Wait for You looks like all the new adult books that have been done before, and in some ways it is. But despite all the common trends and themes, it ends up being SO much more! I expected to be a little irked with Wait for You for these reasons:

* Avery meets Cam (the love interest) practically on the first page.
* Avery is the quiet, anti-social, but apparently gorgeous girl who snags the most eligible bachelor in town.
* Avery is the broken, "damaged" girl who needs to be healed.
* At the beginning, Cam acts like an extremely self-important, arrogant, egotistical guy. He's nice, but my god that man thinks highly of himself.

Doesn't sound ideal, right? Sounds like it's been done before... and it has. But there was something extra about Wait for You that roped me in. I didn't like Cam at first because of his "I'm awesome" attitude, but he grew on me. Unlike most guys who are like that, he wasn't an ass. He was an incredibly nice and genuine guy. I finally started to take his self-important behaviour as more of a lighthearted joke than a serious thing, which is how I think he intends it. And once I got to the middle of the book, that's when I was seriously hooked.

I could not. stop. reading.

Cam and Avery just owned me. At 3am I looked at the clock and made an assessment. I had 100 pages left, but should I go to bed? It was late, I was tired, and I could always finish tomorrow. HELL NO! I kept going, going, and going—powering through right until the end.

I feel like I'm bouncing all over the place with this review, because the book was so damn good and I'm trying to hit everything at once! Ahh!! Okay, let's regroup.

Avery has two awesome friends: Brit and Jacob. They weren't exactly the focus of the book, but they were two awesome side characters! They were fun, good humoured, loved to go on about hot guys and sex, but most importantly, they knew when to be funny and when to be series. Brit, in particular, really knew when to tell Jacob to shut up so that Brit and Avery could have some serious girl time.

And Cam.. OH MY GOD CAM!! You guys he is amazing. O_O Once you learn to not take his ego inflating comments too seriously, you realize he's just a genuinely nice guy. He's the guy who will hold your hair back when you're puking up you guts, he'll take you stargazing, cook you breakfast, and have a few weird quirks that make you smile. And he and Avery had terrific chemistry! For the entire second half of the book, there were butterflies in my stomach. My heart was POUNDING because the kissing scenes knocked me over with how intense they were.

Wait for You wasn't quite perfect. I had my doubts about Cam at the beginning, and Avery sometimes bugged me. Like how she thought Cam would judge her or break up with her if he knew she'd been raped. Or how she thought he expected sex from her, even after she knew what a great guy he was. She never gave him enough credit (except at the end). But despite its imperfections, Wait for You had me hooked. I was giggling, smiling, squealing, and just flat out could not put this sucker down.

If you're looking for a heart-throbbing romance with a super sweet guy and kissing scenes that will make you pass out from ALL THE FEELS, look no further, my friends.

[jnikkir]

3.5 stars—rounding down to 3 because the copyediting (or lack thereof) in this book was atrocious. But I did really like the characters and story.

[thebookdisciple]

Cute. Kind of predictable, but if you like a purely sappy romance, this is great.

[Angie]

Wait For You took me on a journey of emotions. I started out excited, then I was wary, then I was uncomfortable, and finally I was relieved. Sexual assault plots make me nervous as heck, but the author took a slightly different route, and it's one that I think really worked. Avery has decided to move from Texas to West Virginia for college in order to escape all of the people from her old life. She's been tormented by classmates, and her family turned their back on her, and all she wants is a fresh start. She settles into her new apartment, makes a couple of friends, and plows into her sexy neighbor on her way to class. From then on, the two are pretty inseparable, but just as friends. Avery has never been in a relationship before, and she's scared that memories from that night five years ago will ruin it for her.

Wait For You had me wary in the beginning once hints that Avery was raped started surfacing. Not just because these plots make me extremely uncomfortable, and not even because I hate seeing it used as a plot device to encourage a romance (which this didn't!). It was that I could relate to Avery way too much. The author didn't make her totally broken, with her assault hanging over everything she does. But it does clearly affect the way she socializes, and it hit way too close for me. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since it just means this was a really spot on portrayal of a girl dealing with it. I really felt like this was the story of Avery's healing process, and not some cheap ploy to have angsty drama with her hot new boyfriend. In fact, there really wasn't a big drama. Yes, Avery and Cam do take a time out, but he was always there for her when she was ready to finally let him in.

I really don't have much to say about Wait For You other than that, since that was what stuck out the most to me. I did enjoy the romance quite a bit, especially since the book spans a year. There's no instalove, and the lovers become friends and get to know each other over several months. There was a minor suspense subplot happening, and I do mean minor. It felt out of place among everything else that was happening, even though it did get connected eventually. In the end, I wish more authors had handled this subject as sensitively rather than for entertainment value as I've seen it too often.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[anastasia]

http://somanybookssolittletimebookgroup.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/wait-for-you-wait-for-you-1-by-j-lynn/

[Leah]

The best thing to come out of publishing recently has definitely been the New Adult genre. It appeals to my age range (20-something) and it’s given me some fabulous new authors to discover. Although, I have to admit, it’s given me too many new authors because, sadly, I now find myself trying to figure out which authors are ones I should be reading and I keep seeing more authors to try and I just do not have the time, sadly, to read them all, though I wish I could. An author who has popped up recently that seems to be my kinda author is J Lynn. The startlit cover, along with the bright green fonts, is beautiful and as soon as I saw the novel on Amazon I bought myself a copy. As with much of the New Adult genre, it was originally self-published and it is amazing!

Wait For You introduces us to Avery, who on her first day of college bumps into the adonis that is Cam Hamilton. Cam Hamilton is beautiful, uber popular, and intrigued by Avery. Avery knows she should keep away; it’s the last thing she needs right now and she tells herself she needs to stay away from him. But Cam is persistent and it determined to get her to say yes to going out with him. As the two of them become ever closer and their friendship deepens, Avery knows she’s going to have to tell Cam the truth about why she moved so far across the country.

As soon as I started reading Wait For You I knew I was in for a treat. Sometimes you just start a book and you just know you’re going to love it (they’re the best kinds of books, for obvious reasons) and this was one of those books. As soon as Cam Hamilton entered page 2, I was lost, but thankfully the book wasn’t just amazing because of Cam (though, for 90% of the book, Cam made it amazing), Avery, too was just so brave. I loved her right from the off, too, and for what she went through, to come out the other side truly did amaze me. But, actually, it wasn’t just the characters I adored; it was the relationship between Cam and Avery. How Cam thought Avery was more than worth his time and attention, how he didn’t just give up the first time she said no to going out with him, how they just seemed to zing off each other and fell into such an easy friendship. How that friendship inevitably went further, because they just SIZZLED. I fell in love with Cam before anybody else had even realised and I just want to know one thing: Where can I get my own Cam Hamilton? Because I want one!

I truly loved this book so much. Wait For You was just perfect in all the right places, with all the best kind of characters (Avery’s two best friends Jacob and Brittany were so awesome and I can smell a sequel there somewhere for each of those two that I would enjoy immensely). I’m actually really chuffed to find out there’s an e-book novella sequel Trust In Me which is told from Cam’s perspective which makes me just want to die right now. I could barely handle Cam from Avery’s perspective nevermind Cam from Cam’s perspective. I’m going to have to invest in a fan. Did I mention I adore the New Adult genre? Freaking amazing. Wait For You is one of the better ones, and if you like New Adult, if you like Cora Carmack, or Rebecca Donovan you’ll looooove Wait For You, I promise.

[lizarodz]

WOW! In a sea of new adult novels that are sprouting everywhere, Wait for You is like a breath of fresh air. I just loved this one so very much!

My only experience with Jennifer Armentrout’s writing is Obsidian, which I adored as well. It seems to me that she is one of the best authors at creating characters that come alive within the story.

Avery is a very complicated character. There is a traumatic and painful event in her life that changed, not only the way she felt about herself, but her relationship with her parents and with her peers. Avery is afraid of letting everyone in, afraid of pain and rejection, so much fear. She needed help that was denied to her and I’m glad that she was able to rise above it all.

I love Cameron with a passion! He is one of the best male characters EVER. He is so sweet, considerate, romantic, gorgeous, not to mention that he has the patience of a saint. Even though he got into some trouble, he tried really hard to overcome all obstacles and I think that scare put things into perspective for him.

At the end, Cam was Avery’s salvation, the lifeline she needed to get her head above water and be willing to fight for something (or someone in this case). I can really appreciate that there was no instant love between them, but rather a friendship that evolved into something ‘more’.

Let me stop here and rant for a little bit. What the *#%& (insert your favorite curse word here) was wrong with Avery’s parents? I wish (not for the first time) that I can slap a fictional character silly! For crying out loud, they should be flogged and then thrown into the sea (it seems that I have a big imagination for torture). I am a mother and if someone were to even attempt something like that with one of my kids, I can assure you that all hell would break loose! **breathing hard** Glad I got that off my chest!

Cam’s family is what families should be like, with ups and downs, but sticking out for each other and accepting everything; the good and the bad. I was glad that Avery had a chance to meet them and realize that her parents are plain crazy.

The writing is awesome. Even if the plot is pretty simple, I can appreciate the details and the angst because it had a reason. I guess you can tell that I really liked Wait for You, I’m a declared Armentrout / Lynn fan for life!

About the cover: Pretty typical for new adult, I do like the black and white picture and the contrast of the red font.

[Ing Cruz]

Enjoyed this story. Beautiful. Loved Cam.