Single Sundays: Dangerous to Know and Love by Jane Harvey-Berrick

Single Sundays: While this blog may be focused on reviewing book series as a whole, we can’t forget about the good ole’ standalone novel! On Sundays, I will review a novel that is considered to be a standalone novel. Here is this week’s offering:

Synopsis for Dangerous to Know and Love (from Goodreads):
Silence is only skin deep.

Nineteen year old Daniel Colton is the guy all the girls want to date, and the man all the guys want to be. Moody, with an explosive temper, closed off and sullen, he’s also beautiful, tatted in delicious ways, with a pierced eyebrow and spiky black hair. It’s rumoured he has piercings in other places, too. Is he really mad, bad and dangerous to know?

Daniel lives with his older brother, Zef, and their home is party central. You want drugs, a good time, liquor, no questions asked? Colton’s is the place to go.

When Daniel and good girl Lisanne Maclaine have to work together on an assignment, Lisanne finds there’s a lot more to the college’s bad boy than his reputation. He’s intelligent and funny and good company. And then she discovers his secret, why he’s so closed off to everyone, and determined to keep people at arms’ length. But being his secret-keeper is harder than she ever dreamed.

Author: Jane Harvey-Berrick
Genre: New Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Drama
Heat Rating: really warm
Point of View: Third Person, Alternating
Publication Date: May 13, 2013
Source & Format: Own–eBook

Why I Picked it Up / My Expectations:

This book had been on my Kindle Wish List for a very long time and one day I randomly decided to check and see if any of the books I “wished” for had dropped in price. Turns out, this one had by quite a bit and I still had a gift card to use so I immediately grabbed it.

The Concept:

This book was really refreshing to read in terms of its concept. Unlike a majority of New Adult reads, this book focused on the current struggles in the protagonists lives–and by that I mean that there isn’t some mysterious event that happened in the past that explains why the character acts like they do. Well, there is…but it’s really hard to explain what exactly is happening (I try to write spoiler free reviews in every sense of the theory!). I guess what I’m trying to say is, I haven’t come across Daniel’s secret in any other book so I really liked that.

The Plot:

I really got sucked into this book; though I think the fact that I should have been studying / reading another slower book at the same time contributed to my slight addiction to this one. But I think the biggest reason was that I wasn’t sure where it was going to go and I wanted to know.

But I felt like it never really went anywhere. It really was a day by day thing with these characters in the sense that it was mostly about them trying to find out where their relationship fit in with their lives. Nothing really exciting happens and it got a little tedious to read; especially when they started acting childish about certain things.

The Romance:

Pair that with the fact that the exposition was wayyyyy to long. It took a good number of pages to get to some character interaction and with romances I really like the sexual tension ASAP. And then when we finally got some sexual tension, it felt like everything accelerated very quickly. I’m not a fan of love at first sight books and in that bracket I include books where the L-word is dropped within two weeks of dating. Just sours what was a nice romance to me–but that is more of a personal preference.

The Narration:

My last comment about the writing is that the third person narration isn’t my favourite. I don’t mind third person, though I prefer alternating first person, but I don’t like when the thoughts of the two characters aren’t separated by page breaks. When I read third person, I like that each character has their own section and for that section you only follow that character from their perspective. With this book, it was jumbled a bit so I really had to focus to make sure that I was getting everything straight.

My Rating: 3.5/5

I really liked the concept of this book, but not so much its execution. It just needs some polishing and some fine-tuning and it would be a great read. If you want a new adult read with a bit of a different spin on it and don’t mind longer books, this one might be worth your time. However, don’t be expecting a some super dangerous bad boy. Daniel definitely has his bad boy touches but he isn’t super “dangerous” per say.

Read if You Like: unique stories, longer reads
Avoid if You: want a true bad boy

• Charade by Nyrae Dawn (Games Series #1)
• Toxic by Rachel van Dyken (Ruin Series #1)

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