Choices (Choices, #1)

by Skyy

[Angie]

Choices was a very different read for me, and while I did enjoy parts of it, ultimately it wasn't really for me. The story follows four friends during one year at college. Carmen, Denise, and Cooley have been friends forever and they meet Lena when she becomes Denise's new roommate. All four ladies are going through many ups and downs, but during it all, they have each other. The friendship bond is strong here and I loved that.

Choices got off to a rough start for me because of the dialogue. It's super inconsistent! Characters go from using a lot of slang, to being super formal (where are the contractions?!) in the same line. Then they go back and forth between the two, sometimes being somewhere in the middle. I could understand if different characters spoke differently, but everyone is like this. No one had an identifiable voice, except for Cooley, because she tended to be more vulgar than the others. However, she still suffered from the inconsistencies. This made the dialogue not flow or feel natural.

Choices also had a lot of issues with scene transitions which left me confused a lot of the time. I had to go back a page or two multiple times because suddenly I'm reading about different characters than I was before. Like, two of the women would be talking together, then two others are talking, even though they're not together. There are no breaks between scenes unless it's a new chapter! This was very frustrating for me.

Aside from those two things, I did like Choices. Not a whole lot, but it did some things really well that I hadn't read before. One thing that I loved was that Carmen, Denise, and Cooley were all out and proud, and actually interacted with other lesbians on campus. Normally, it's like the main characters are in some kind of bubble where they're the only queer people, and one of them isn't even out, or doesn't even know what they are. In this case, these women own their sexuality and don't hold back. This does get Cooley in trouble though, because she's a total player. When she tries to settle down, all of her previous hook ups come back to haunt her.

Something else I really loved about Choices was Carmen's story. This is the first time I've ever read about a character who had Lap Band surgery. She had been over three hundred pounds, but now the weight is gone. She's super self-concious though, because now women who wouldn't give her the time of day are suddenly interested. Even her cheating ex comes crawling back now that she has an "acceptable" body type.

Choices has some great stuff going for it, but the dialogue and scene transitions make it really hard to read. And while I enjoyed Cooley's reformed player storyline, it felt really disconnected from the other story arcs happening. It almost felt like she was just there to add sex scenes, since she's the only one really getting any. That page time could have been spent more on the tension between Lena and Denise, which took the backseat a lot of the time.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.