No Holding Back (Dodge Cove Trilogy)

by Kate Evangelista

[Leah]

No Holding Back is one of the cutest contemporary YA novels I’ve read in ages, although I must confess to being a bit of a snob at first because it seemed way to posh for my liking (I also don’t think of American people as being posh, because when I think of the word posh I think of the Queen, but America obviously does have it’s upper classes and you can tell right away Dodge Cove is one of those places – heck, the book opens with Nathan and Preston at Preston’s CATERED, party-planned 13th birthday) but it’s actually really cute and excusing the private jet (so jealous), they’re just two normal guys on a trip around Europe.

I did get a bit frustrated at times, actually just the once, when Preston blew up at Nathan for taking his phone, and he acted like a total jerk, but to give him his props, he apologised so I (and Nathan) forgave him. That kinda set the tone for the first few weeks of the trip, bickering a lot, both of them going silent on the other, and you kinda just wanted to smash their heads together, because it’s a trip! It’s supposed to be fun! They’re supposed to be forgetting about real life, or rather Preston is, as he waits to hear from a swimming club, but it was so tense! I can understand why, because poor Nathan had all these feelings ready to burst out, but it was better for sure when they started to get along better, when they stopped over-thinking everything.

I actually haven’t read the first book, although I own it, but I’m definitely going to go back and see what kind of role Nathan and Preston played in No Love Allowed, because they’re great characters, really likeable, easy to relate to, and I’m also super excited that there’s going to be a third book – Natasha SURELY, and I’m kinda hoping Jackson stops being a douche and comes to his senses? Because I already kinda feel like they belong together (cue Mariah Carey).

This was genuinely such a cute love story, and seeing Nathan fighting his feelings was hard because I just wanted him to blurt it out and see where the chips fell, see if Preston felt the same, and I could barely stop flipping the pages, because I wanted to know how exactly this book would end. I really, really enjoyed No Holding Back. The setting was perfect, the countries they visited sounded amazing, and you’ve literally never met two people more perfect for each other (and clueless to that fact). I loved it.