Once Upon a Twilight!: Book Review: Take What You Want by Jeanette Grey + Giveaway

Take What You Want
Author: Jeanette Grey
Reading Level: New Adult
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Released: March 12th 2013
Review Source: Author
Available: Amazon

Summary: (from goodreads) She needs an escape…and he’s exactly what she had in mind.

College senior Ellen Price spends every spare minute studying to get into medical school. Until spring break yawns before her, as empty as her wallet.

With no money to hit the beach, she fills her empty to-do list with a plan: for just one week, she will become the kind of take-no-prisoners woman she secretly wishes to be, starting with the hot guy at the bar. It's a no-risk situation: at the end of break, he’ll head back to his campus, and she’ll go back to hers. No muss, no fuss.

At first, Josh Markley isn’t sure what to think when the quiet, intense beauty from his pre-med classes approaches him for a night of casual sex. Even more mystifying, she doesn’t seem to return his recognition. But if she wants to play “strangers in a bar”, he’s game.

Their passionate night is a welcome respite from life’s stress, but afterward, Josh realizes he wants more—from himself, from life, from Ellen. Except she still thinks he’s a one-off she’ll never see again. Confessing the truth now—before she figures it out on her own—could shatter the fragile beginnings of just what the doctor ordered. A forever love.

Warning: Contains mistaken identities, a sometimes-glasses-wearing hottie, deep questions about figuring out what you want from life, and a red-hot college romance.

I'm not going to waste time summarizing this book. Anyone can read the Goodreads summary that is provided above. What I am going to do is begin my rant about how much I loved reading this story. The story itself is only about 130+ pages long. Ordinarily this is where I'd tell you how I wish the book had been longer. I am not going to do that here. Why? This book was the perfect length for what the story was about and I want to give kudos to Jeanette Grey for not throwing in a bunch of extra fluff to build up this story or drag it out like some books will. There wasn't a lot of back story needed here. And yet, having said that, this wasn't just a story about two adults in college hooking up for a one night stand. Here Jeanette has given us two beautiful characters who are so caught up in their current lives that they don't leave a ton of time to explore what else life has to offer.

Ellen creates a false persona of herself to go after something just to see what will happen but it turns out to be exactly who she should have been all along. She becomes a new person, a more relaxed person almost overnight. Josh on the other hand knows who he is and what he wants but doesn't know how to express that to his father with all of his overbearing expectations for Josh's' future. Caught in a case of Clark Kent vs. Superman, Josh goes to a bar without his glasses one night and Ellen doesn't recognize him. She believes him to be just some local guy in town from school for the week to hang out with his parents. He doesn't bother to correct her, but he's been interested in Ellen for three years. He is definitely interested in the game she is playing and wondering just how far the game can go before all their secrets have to be revealed.

Deep down I think we have all been there at one point or another. Not everyone in college knows exactly who they are, where they are going or even what they will become after they have graduated. That is what made this story genuinely relatable and what made me fall in love with these two characters. This was such a beautiful, romantic and often a very steamy erotic novel for being so short. Jeanette Grey packed one hot romance into a very short book that I admittedly have already read twice and loved even more the second time around. If she can make me feel this much for a book that is less than 200 pages, I would love to see what she can do with something longer but I'd be just as content reading 100 more short novels if they are of the same caliber as this one.