Synopsis from Amazon.com:
From the best selling YA romance author of The Avery Shaw Experiment comes a wildly funny and heart-melting rockstar romance. Kyle Hamilton is the quintessential bad boy, but Val Jensen is not your typical good girl.
When Val gets dumped for her decision to stay a virgin until marriage, the nasty breakup goes viral on YouTube, making her the latest internet sensation.
After days of ridicule from her peers, Val starts a school-wide campaign to rally support for her cause. She meant to make a statement, but she never dreamed the entire nation would get caught up in the controversy.
As if becoming nationally recognized as “Virgin Val” isn’t enough, Val’s already hectic life starts to spin wildly out of control when bad boy Kyle Hamilton, lead singer for the hit rock band Tralse, decides to take her abstinence as a personal challenge.
How can a girl stay true to herself when this year’s Sexiest Man Alive is doing everything in his power to win her over?
I wanted to like this book. I really did. But I did not, for multiple reasons.
First of all, the story moves way too fast. We start with the main character, Val, being dumped and then quickly move from her being heart broken to being angry to being fearless to suddenly becoming an activist. Of course she claims this isn’t what she wanted, this is all so crazy, blah blah blah, but in reality she suddenly becomes popular and she doesn’t exactly hate it. She’s begins to benefit from her declaration of virginity and it’s almost way too easy for her. Additionally, the epilogue then jumps ahead four years for no reason other than to set up the sequel.
I struggled to believe that this girl, especially in high school, would rise so quickly in popularity just for standing up for herself. Do I support her standing up for what she believes in? Sure. Is it realistic that after doing so her life would become perfectly perfect and she’d have a rock star craving her attention and become one of the cool kids? Definitely not.
Also, I hated her friendship with the her supposed best friend, Cara. I won’t spoil it but I just felt like their friendship was way to fickle for them to supposedly have been friends for as long as they had. Cara didn’t really seem all that supportive for what Val was trying to do with her “V is for Virgin” campaign and honestly Cara just seemed like a sucky friend in general.
Lastly, I wanted to like Kyle. The whole bad boy, good girl thing usually works for me but I couldn’t get behind Kyle. He comes off as very obnoxious, annoying, and just a pester. Of course as the novel progresses we learn why he’s the way he is and truly he is a good person if you just look hard enough. Typical. However, that shouldn’t excuse his crappy behavior. Moreover, I struggled to believe the complete character turn around we see in him in the end. It’s too perfect.
I think Kelly Oram was trying to present a book that shows it is possible to wait until marriage and still get everything you want. Although I do believe this, what I don’t believe is it would be as easy as she makes it out to be in this book. She makes being a virgin seem cool and has guys who were against it at first suddenly come around and say, “You know what I can actually wait.” Yeah, sure.
This story was just too perfectly perfect for be to believe. Every conflict was easily resolved and Val’s struggles were very minimal. There is a sequel to this novel and although I am curious I don’t think I’m curious enough to read it.
Favorite Line:
“Cheesy lines like that will get you nowhere with me, but, by all means, keep them coming. You’re so much easier to ignore when you’re being an idiot.”
Stars: 2 out of 5. There were some parts that I did enjoy but overall not a favorite of mine.
Borrow or Buy: Borrow. Not worth keeping.
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Zakiya N. Jamal 