In Excess

Title: In Excess
Author: Quinn Anderson
Cover artist:
Publisher: Less Than Three Press
Amazon: In Excess
Genre: contemporary romance
Length: 86000 words
Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

A guest review by Sirius

Summary: “It’s so cliche, it’s almost vulgar. The plucky new transfer student turns everything on its head. Sounds like a bad novel.” – Quote from the story.

Blurb:

Forced to transfer to a privileged Catholic school—the Academy of Holy Names—street-smart Nikolas would prefer to be anywhere else in the world. A new face in an old place, he almost immediately draws the attention of the bored, spoiled, and ruthless Seth, the “king” of the Academy.
Though he should know better, Nikolas quickly finds himself caught up in a game of rivalry and seduction, with himself as the prize …

Review:

I am a sucker for the “from enemies to lovers” trope, remember? This of course sometimes works against me since I may take a less careful look at the book if I see the signs of  my favourite trope flashing from the cover or the blurbs

I may not completely agree with the character  whose words I quoted in my summary, but I cannot deny the fact that  in my opinion what he said reflects the gist of this story. I just do not think that the story was that bad. I mean, I strongly advise you to adjust your expectations if you decide to get it and do not expect anything more than over the top silly fun. In that sense I enjoyed it, and I thought the story was well told.

I also hoped that the story was not taking itself too seriously because of the few more examples as the one  I  put in the summary. It is not a comedy, do not get me wrong and  I was not laughing out loud, but  I did smile several times.

There is also that indication that Seth and his chaps were all amazingly gorgeous, beautiful, just unearthly beautiful, but then they were doing things to Nick which were not nice at all and to me it seemed that the author was poking fun as to their beauty not matching their what? Libido? Intelligence? Those are all my wild guesses, and maybe what author was writing was something totally different, but then my grade would take a dive without any doubt.

I actually liked the chemistry between two main characters, I thought that they could have been portrayed in a lot more depth than they were, but I thought they were good  together. The blurb does not tell you whom Nick would end up with, so I would not either.

Having said that, I want to talk about why I would not grade the story higher. As the blurb tells you the action takes place in college, and to me none of these boys/teens/men act, speak their age (19-20 years old). I just could not shake off  the thought that these guys do not act or think as college students. I mean, the blurb is sufficiently vague, so I have to be vague as well, but I am going to say that the whole set up in this Catholic University reminded me of high school, not college at all. I am sure college students here in the US party hard too (I did not go to college in America, so cannot speak from experience), but surely nineteen and twenty year olds have something else on their minds to worry about besides playing stupid pranks and bask in the adoration of the whole student body?  Yes, supposedly three jocks in this book worry about their grades, but  a) I doubted it a lot,  even though their worries are mentioned in passing several times, and b) shouldn’t they also give at least some thought about what they want from life as grown ups? To me their conversations just felt like the conversations of horny fifteen – sixteen year old teenagers.

I guess this book gave me a vibe similar to the American movie “Cruel Intentions”, only not as cruel, more like stupid.

I did not regret reading it and would recommend it as a pleasant way to pass an hour or two, but as I said, just be sure you adjust your expectations.