Benjamin Nefer seems to have it all. He’s the most popular guy in school, the star quarterback with college scouts looking at him, his grades are near the top of his class, he can get any girl he wants . . . but he hides behind his dream life to mask the nightmare of his reality.

Charlie Austin is the new girl. Forced to move in with a bitter aunt, she only wants to protect her fragile mom from the world’s cruelty. When Benjamin sets his sights on Charlie, she’s armored against his charm—friends warned her about Benjamin’s game of pursuing and then dumping a long line of girls, not caring about the broken hearts he leaves behind. She doesn’t count on how single-minded he can be when she refuses him, or how charismatic, easing into her life through what he claims is just friendship. 

Benjamin thought he could keep Charlie in the same place he keeps all girls—something to be used and then discarded. But Charlie has as many secrets as he does, secrets he’s determined to discover while keeping his own hidden. He realizes she’s the perfect girlfriend candidate . . . someone he can use to keep up the façade of a perfect life. Now he just has to keep his frozen heart from softening toward this unique girl, because if he doesn’t, his carefully constructed lies might just come thundering down around him, crushing him beneath the burden of feeling. 

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GOODREADS || AMAZON

Benjamin Nefer is that guy in school. He thinks he's God's gift to the female kind, he's a jock, he breaks hearts. He's the stereotype of what a popular guy is. But underneath that façade, he's an unfeeling bastard (ha!) and actually suffers physical abuse from his dad. He claims not to not feel anything after what he'd been through.

Enter new girl Charlie Austin. She doesn't fall with Benjamin's charms and whatnot but somehow they formed a friendship that both of them never expected.

The progress of the story was agonizingly slow. Nothing much happens until halfway of the story. Noting the slow pace, I expected a build-up to happen but the climax felt insufficient for me. The ending felt too abrupt too.

Also, even if the characters were close to my age, I couldn't connect with them. They were also very confusing.

My biggest issue here was Benjamin. He was one of those "tell but don't show" characters. He claimed to not feel anything and he once said that he couldn't care so he couldn't love or something along those lines. So of course I automatically assume that he would be indifferent with almost everything because he couldn't feel, right? He couldn't love, hate, or care at all. But no. I wasn't given that. He cared about Charlie's mom, he hated his mother, he liked treating girls he dated like doormats. I'm not saying that he shouldn't do those things save the latter but seriously, I needed consistency. Those contradictions made him a very unstable character for me.

Also, he was an enabler. Up until now, I still didn't understand why he allowed his father to beat him up almost every day. He could easily defeat him if he wanted to. For Pete's sake, he was a quarterback and a boxer. Playing those sports, surely he realized that size wasn't everything when it came to fighting. Add to that, his father was always drunk when he beat him up so what the fuck was up with that?

With Charlie, well, there were a lot of times when I said, "I told you so." Her friends kept on telling her not to fall for Benjamin's charms and she kept on saying that she wouldn't. The next thing they knew, she told them that she was Benjamin's girlfriend. And she still didn't expect that he would break her heart, after hearing her friend's story? Hahaha.

Overall, I was extremely disappointed. When I read the blurb, I expected something new because it had all of the ingredients for an NA book. (This is YA, by the way.)