True (True Believers, #1)

by Erin Mccarthy

[EBookObsessed]

I really loved these characters and watching them bond. Tyler is a damaged hero, my favorite kind. He is the kid from the wrong neighborhood that you judge poorly when you first see him with his t-shirts and mass of tattoos. His drug abusing mother calls him a loser and after years of being subjected to that, living in the poorest neighborhood with little money after his mother buys her drugs, and struggling to keep is younger brothers safe, he doesn’t feel worthy of someone as smart as Rory. Tyler likes her odd sense of humor and to him she is absolutely beautiful. Tyler just wants to be near her, even if she only wants to be friends, and it is a miracle to him when she tells him that she loves him. Rory’s quiet nature is a calm haven in his stormy life.

This is an official New Adult book which “features characters who are at the stage of figuring out who they are.” Generally that is post-high school, and is either entering college or just entering the work force. Rory hasn't dated much and has never had a boyfriend. She still has some leftover teenage angst, but it is tempered by her linear thinking. She is shy and socially awkward so her angst comes out by her being afraid that the interest Tyler is showing in her is just going to set her for heartbreak as she falls for him, since what would he want with a girl like her. She is upset when she learns that her friends offered Tyler money to sleep with her so she could “get over the shy virgin thing,” and although she does cry about it, before she rails at him, she thinks things through and is confused that for someone who is supposed to be getting her in bed, he’d rather just spend time with her.

Once Rory and Tyler establish a relationship, it is Tyler’s drug abusing mother and Rory’s overprotective father who become the antagonists in this story, interfering with the lives of their children and doing their best to destroy everything.

I enjoyed the building of the relationship and the romance between these two slightly unusual characters.

My only complaint here is that I believe this story needed to have an epilogue. Rory’s father doesn’t want her involved with Tyler because of all his family problems. He is afraid of her being around the drug abusing mother and the issues that come up and that Tyler will be burdened with raising his younger siblings, and that is all drama that Rory doesn’t have to get involved with and that she should find a “normal” boyfriend. In the end, of course, they decide they want to be together, which is easy to say at that point in the story. I do believe that even their difficulties could have been worked out with a little determination to be together. In the end, I would have like to see, for example, by the time Rory graduated from med school (6 years later), how the dynamics of Tyler and his older brother would have worked out caring for the younger siblings; how Tyler and Rory’s relationship would have evolved around their more grown up responsibilities and her med school; would Rory’s father look past Tyler’s family issues and tattoos to see what a good man he was for his daughter; etc.

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