Irresistible

by Liz Bankes

[Jo]

Originally posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

Because of all the buzz around Irresistible, I was really looking forward to reading it - even more so as it's home grown new adult. So I picked it up eagerly, and I'm happy to say I enjoyed it.

When Mia gets a summer job at Radleigh Castle, she meets two boys; cute, sweet Dan, fellow employee, and dangerously sexy Jamie, son of her employer. Mia is attracted to both boys, but although Dan is lovely, funny and obviously really likes her, there's something about Jamie that she just can't resist. Is it his good looks? His constant flirting and innuendo? Or the fact that he has a reputation, a girlfriend, and is out of bounds? One thing's for sure, Mia is playing with fire, and someone's going to get burned.

I enjoyed Irresistible, but there was one thing that annoyed me a little about it; how young some of the characters seemed, especially Gabi and Dan. Gabi is overly loud and in some ways quite shallow, a character I wouldn't like generally, but she also comes across as being so much younger than her 16 years. She is an awesome friend to Mia, but sometimes I just wanted to throttle her. And Dan... he was just too nice and sweet. Unbelievably nice and sweet. For 18, it was just hard to believe that's who he was. There are nice guys in the world, sure, but not that sugarcoated. And as I couldn't believe his character, I wasn't really rooting for him, unfortunately. And even Mia had her moments of being seriously naive, and seemingly too naive for her age.

Saying that, Irresistible is a fun book! Full of sexual tension between Mia and Jamie - who was so hot, and such a bad boy! He's not your usual bad boy, where a guy looks a certain way, has a certain attitude, but underneath it all has a heart of gold. No, Jamie is bad. Bad for your heart. He's hot and he knows it, women throw themselves at him, and he takes what he wants from them and then walks away. His girlfriend, Cleo, knows all of this, yet for some reason, just lets it happen. And now he's got his sights set on Mia. And, strangely, while reading it I was all for something happening between them. Maybe because I wasn't so keen on Dan, maybe because all the sexual tension and idea of the forbidden to Mia was exciting and so was pretty damn sexy to read. There scenes were pretty damn awesome, and I was reading thinking, "Oh my god, will you just kiss him already!" I would have preferred there to be more scenes between them during the  late night swimming sessions, to see more development between the two of them; the conversations they had, and how things lead to where they went. I don't really see why those scenes, which I think would have been quite important for the development of their relationship, were mentioned but not really seen - I think we saw two? - when the book is only 213 pages long. It's not like the book was getting too long. But as I said, I really enjoyed the sexual tension and seeing them together. However, as I said above, Jamie is bad, and oh my god, I got so bloody angry at various points in the book! As much as I loved him, I also hated him.

There's something I want to discuss that has me confused. This has no bearing on how good the book is, so not down to Liz Bankes, but I feel I was slightly misled. Irresistible is marketed as a "steamy". There has been a number of articles in the press regarding Irresistible and about the sexual content when it's a book for teens. You only really have to look at the cover, read those articles, here it's a "steamy", have a "15" warning label like certificates on films on the proof to think it's a book chock full of sex. It's really not. I'm not going to really talk about the sex scenes specifically, because I think that would be too spoilery, but I have read YA novels with more sex scenes that are much more graphic, and no-one's batted an eyelid. Irresistible is more sexual tension than actual sex, and quite tame in comparison to other books I've read. It's a sexy book, sure, but it's not all that bad. I don't really see why there has been such a focus on sex when talking about this book, when really, it's more about Mia and her relationships with people. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Overall, a quick, fun, sexy read, that keeps you turning the pages! I will be keeping my eye out for more books by Bankes in the future.