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| | Description | SHE’S WRITING ABOUT HIM. HE’S WRITING ABOUT HER. AND EVERYBODY IS READING BETWEEN THE LINES. For Erin Blackwell, majoring in creative writing at the New York City college of her dreams is more than a chance to fulfill her ambitions—it’s her ticket away from the tragic memories that shadow her family’s racehorse farm in Kentucky. But when she refuses to major in business and take over the farm herself someday, her grandmother gives Erin’s college tuition and promised inheritance to their maddeningly handsome stable boy, Hunter Allen. Now Erin has to win an internship and work late nights at a local coffee shop to make her own dreams a reality. She should despise Hunter . . . so why does he sneak into her thoughts as the hero of her latest writing assignment? Then, on the day she’s sharing that assignment with her class, Hunter walks in. He’s joining her class. And after he reads about himself in her story, her private fantasies about him must be painfully clear. She only hopes to persuade him not to reveal her secret to everyone else. But Hunter devises his own creative revenge, writing sexy stories that drive the whole class wild with curiosity and fill Erin’s heart with longing. Now she’s not just imagining what might have been. She’s writing a whole new ending for her romance with Hunter . . . except this story could come true. | |
| | Product Details | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 92 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 92 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 found the following review helpful:
 The Title Tells All! Jul 18, 2011
By Angela
"Reading Angel"
Love Story is my first Jennifer Echols' book and I was not disappointed. Love Story was creative, unique, and full of funny moments. I loved the premise of this novel, that Erin and Hunter used their creative writing class assignments to send heated messages back and forth to each other. Learning their backstory along the way only added to the richness of the tale.
I enjoyed Erin as a lead female. She was smart, and had her mind set on what she wanted to be. Although she had came from money, she was determined to work as hard as possible to get to her goal, even if that meant eating nothing but peanut butter crackers to do it. Hunter was a frustratingly fantastic lead male. One second you want Erin to smack him and the next you want her to kiss him senseless, which makes for a fun romance!
My only problem with this book, and the reason it was a 4 star instead of a 5 star for me, was that I desperately wanted another chapter at the end. I just felt like I didn't get enough closure with the storyline, or the romance, or the family dynamic that I was already so invested in. I think even one more chapter could have wrapped this up better for me, but it just wasn't there.
Overall, Love Story was exactly what it's title tells us it will be, but it is a fantastic one! This is a light-hearted and funny love story for the romantic in all of us! I enjoyed being swept away with Erin and Hunter and if you like funny or romance I think you will too.
11 of 12 found the following review helpful:
I vote for a sequel to make up for this abrupt ending - anyone else? Jul 23, 2011
By The Book Runner
I love a great romance with all its conflicts, embarrassing moments, and quirky friends which capture my emotions and leave me breathlessly waiting for the beautiful, passionate resolution. Well, I am still waiting! As great as the beginning of this story is, it just ends - abruptly.
****Some Spoilers throughout****
Erin has grown up rich by not emotionally unscarred. Her mother was beat-up by her father and after leaving him, found love then, was accidentally killed by a started race horse on her mother's horse ranch. Erin was raised by her emotionally distant grandmother who wants her to take over the family business by majoring in business in college. She refuses, and her grandmother gives her college money to Hunter along with the promise of the ranch as an inheritance.
Hunter is the son of the work hand her mother fell in love with when she was killed. They were friends before the accident, but Erin withdrew after her mother's death and now is furious with him for taking her inheritance. On the day her first writing assignment is to be critiqued by the class, Hunter is admitted into the group and hears her first story - it's about him.
He definitely has feelings for her, but she refuses to see them as anything but hate and her own feelings of resentment prevent her from really looking closer. But they are in the same dorm and they have two class together and end up spending some time together as they write their assignments about each other for class.
Erin starts to believe that his feelings for her are real when she overhears a conversation between him and her grandmother. Now she knows the truth - or she thinks she does.
This was definitely an entertaining story with great secondary characters that made the plot more fun. Summer was a great friend to play off of and her relationship with Hunter's roommate was a fun secondary romance. Staging it at college was also more interesting and helps set the maturity level a little higher than high school. It is a good place to see relationships away from parental authority but still subjected to it.
But, still the ending - so unsatisfying. All this angst and feuding to be just summed up in the last two pages. I would have preferred more dialogue and more romance to this resolution. It just felt sudden and tentative. These two are never congenial for long, so a more convincing declaration of forgiveness and love would have been more satisfying.
I am definitely a Jennifer Echols fan and loved "Going Too Far "and "Forget You". I actually think I like "Love Story" the best, although, "Going Too Far" was really great. I would definitely be willing to read a sequel to Love Story and consider this ending a cliff hanger (cough, Ms. Echols, cough).
Would I/Did I buy it? Yes
Would I read it again? Yes
Would I recommend it to friends? Yes
7 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Not one of Ms Echols' better efforts Nov 21, 2011
By The Ultimate Escapist
I was really quite angry at the end of the book. I had expected so much better from this author. I don't know when she wrote this book but I can only hope it was years ago, before she developed her skill, because that's the only excuse she can use.
The plot was just all over the place. I was never sure of what the characters truly felt, despite the heavy doses of introspection by the female protagonist. The minor characters were treated like so much excess baggage, shedding them abruptly after giving us a whole bunch of irrelevant information.
The apparent main plot - a grandmother disowning her own grandchild and handing over the reins of the property to the stable master's son to teach her a lesson on obedience - is trampled under the granddaughter's messed up relationship with the 'stable boy', both of who believe the other hates them.
It's a goddamn mess and Ms Echols did hardly anything to untangle it well. In the end their issues were only partly resolved and happy ending was an uncertain hope.
Maybe all the angst in the book and general feelings of betrayal would have flowed better from a more mature Jennifer Echols' hand, but I doubt it. The plot just plain sucked.
The only parts I truly enjoyed were the two short stories that Hunter wrote for their creative writing class - One was a gritty yet touching piece on his longing for Erin (the spoilt, angst-y granddaughter) and his determination to ignore it; the second was a rather poignant one about a child and his curiosity that drives him to experiment on long stretches of fields, trying to estimate exactly how big the universe is.
Those stories showed Echols' potential.
7 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Awful. Jul 26, 2011
By Anonymous Reviewer
The main character is smart, funny, forgiving, and empathic. The guy is a total jerk who does nothing but talk down to her, lie to her, and make her feel terrible about herself. I kept hoping he would redeem himself since I wanted to like him, but instead I became convinced that nobody with any self respect would date him, no matter how hot and charming he is on the surface. I came to hate the main character, too, for being such a spineless wimp and not realizing she deserved a whole lot better. Also, the ending was not even an ending; I can't believe a publisher would let it through. Both upsetting and depressing, won't be reading another book by this author.
*******MAJOR SPOILERS*********************
Just to rant a little more about how much I hated the guy in this story:
At the horse races he accuses Erin of plagiarizing his life. I didn't understand how he could possibly feel that way, what basis he had for believing that, or why he would be so angry about her coming to new york when she DID have several extremely good reasons to do so (as well as a very good reason for not wanting to go to california anymore after her mother died), not to mention the fact that he stole her life in a far more direct way, and one would think that would temper all the drama-queen hissy-fit unfounded rage that he is apparently building up inside his self-absorbed head (all over her deciding to move to the same city he told her he wanted to go to once upon a time? get a grip!).
After the horse races, he blackmails her to get her to go to dinner, insults her, is subsequently more mean to her because he feels guilty, and then tries to tell her what she can and can't do with her life (he says she can't move out of the dorms). When she sticks up for herself for once and says he has to trust her judgement (which she APOLOGIZES FOR, GAG), he flips out at her for no reason, belittles how hard she's working to achieve her goals, says she'll always be a spoiled rich girl, and is generally disgusting to her. She does not defend herself. She does not demand or seem to expect an apology from him for it. It's like she feels guilty for something - possibly existing? (Also note that later, in the hospital when she is tired and in pain, she makes one, joking comment that stereotypes his life in a similar way [except without the aggression and desire to cause pain] and he gets angry about it; she immediately apologizes to him. He actually says he's sorry, at that point, but then calls her a bastard)
He also never apologizes for lying to her about her father being at her farm. What kind of person would do that to someone? And not even feel bad? He wants whatever he wants, and how she feels clearly doesn't matter to him at all.
Then, when they spend the night together, he doesn't even realize anything is wrong with her beforehand or after - or maybe he just doesn't care. Either way, I seriously could not hate this guy more.
At one point, Erin actually compares him with her father, who used to hit her mother. After all of his lying, manipulating, emotional abuse, possessive displays, and never talking to her about her mother's death even when Erin practically begged him to with her story (in fact, his one emotional talk with her is while extremely drunk; he probably doesn't even remember it in the morning), I for one do not find it a very large leap at all for him to hit her someday if she doesn't fall in line and do exactly what he wants all the time. There are even several times in the story where he holds her in place despite her struggling, and twice where he uses force/surprise to kiss her) Maybe he loves her, in his own, messed up, emotionally stunted kind of way, but that is not enough, in real life or a love story; he is still abusive, bad for her, and generally not a good person.
This was not a love story, it was a tragedy.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 Disappointing Resolution and Misleading Back Cover Blurb Dec 14, 2011
By Jennifer J.
After reading Forget You and not liking it very much, I was reluctant to give any other book by Jennifer Echols a shot. But there was something about the description of Love Story that made me go against my gut instinct to just say no. First of all, I love that Love Story is set in New York, and I love that Erin, our heroine, is so in love with the city, but I wish that we had seen more of it through her eyes. I did love the nod to the Simon & Schuster building, which I recently saw for myself when I visited NYC for the first time in my life.
Erin is the granddaughter of a stinking rich horse farm owner; her grandmother wants her to take over the farm after she is gone, but Erin has other ideas. Erin wants to write. Instead of supporting her granddaughter's wishes, she cuts her off and Erin is forced to make her own way. To make matters even worse, the college tuition that would have been Erin's has been given to the stable boy, Hunter Allen.
To deal with her painful situation, Erin uses her writing as an outlet, and Hunter winds up in her story. The last thing that Erin expected was that Hunter would ever read the story...and that in retaliation, Hunter would write his own story about her. As much as Erin wants to hate Hunter, she finds herself falling for him, even though he could ruin her chances of winning the internship that would hopefully launch her writing career if he reveals that what is supposed to be fiction is indeed fact.
I feel quite a bit misled by some of the info on the back of the book, particularly "She's writing about him. He's writing about her. And everybody is reading between the lines" as well as "But Hunter devises his own creative revenge, writing sexy stories that drive the whole class wild with curiosity and fill Erin's heart with longing." This led me to believe that there would be more back and forth stories between Erin and Hunter, while their classmates gossiped about them and the contents of their stories. But...there's none of that. In fact, those parts are a huge let down. Instead, their classmates just complain about Erin including the word "nipples" in her story or that honors creative writing courses should not include romance novel writing. No juicy gossip...except among the 3 or 4 students that are in the know about the situation between Erin and Hunter. In fact, when it's finally revealed that Hunter is the lower class forbidden love object, all of the students are shocked. So no, no one is reading between the lines or being driven wild with curiosity. Big fail on the part of the person who wrote the book's description.
I didn't feel that Echols did a very good job of developing Erin's back story. There is something tragic that happened to her mother, which Erin retells fictitiously in one of her stories. Erin talks a little bit about it with Hunter later on, but I still have no idea what is the truth about her mother and some lover and her father, and that drove me slightly mad trying to figure it all out.
Erin's grandmother is constantly referred to throughout the whole book, but I wanted actual interaction and dialogue between the grandmother and Erin. I think there's only about one scene with the grandmother in it, and she's not even front and center for that scene. She would have been a much more powerful character if she could have hogged a scene or two.
And finally, the ending. I didn't love it, not even close. It just kind of...stops. We never find out what happens with the creative writing class, or Erin's and Hunter's academic futures. Even if Erin had not been granted the internship, I still thought the book should circle back to it because it is the one thing that Erin wanted in addition to Hunter.
I think this will officially be the last Jennifer Echols book that I read; her characters are either irritating or unlikable, and the endings never quite resolve themselves the way I think they should.
See all 92 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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