Hey Guys!
I've been reading so many great books the last couple of weeks, and I'm definitely behind in posting reviews for them.
So today I'm going to take the first steps towards getting back on track, and I'm going to post my review for Bluff by Julie Dill.
Source: ARC via NetGalley
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Publication Date: February 7th, 2017
I received an ARC copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are one hundred percent my own.
Synopsis:
Seventeen-year-old Chelsea Knowles is surrounded by the privileged. Michael Kors gym bags, and designer shoes are part of her daily scene, but the talented cheerleader has a secret: she and her dad can barely pay the bills. Broken by his wife walking out on their family, Chelsea's father ignores his responsibilities. Between cheer costs, grocery bills, electricity, and other regular financial burdens, it's no surprise when a cut-off notice arrives in the mail. Chelsea knows it'll be up to her to keep the lights on.
With the deck stacked against her, Chelsea decides to bet their future on the dubious poker knowledge she learned from her father before he gave up on parenting. Nervous but determined, Chelsea heads to a casino with very little security and wins big. Thrilled by her win, she's quickly drawn to the casino again and again. She risks it all, especially when the attractive, young pit boss takes an interest in her.
Chelsea's life, no longer filled with cheerleading, school and hanging out with her friends, is now consumed by smoky casino floors and the ups and downs of a gambler's life. True gambler's know when to fold, but Chelsea keeps betting long after her needs are met. The complicated web of lies soon begins to spin out of control, threatening to expose everything. Will someone see through her bluff?
Review:
Bluff was a novel I was originally attracted to because of it's unique synopsis. I'm all for trying out YA books about topics that I've never read before, and this one being about a teenage girl who turns to gambling to help her home life situation is definitely unlike anything I'd ever read before. I found this book definitely had it's ups and downs, and it started out a tad slow for me, but I did end up enjoying it overall, despite having a few issues throughout the plot line.
Chelsea is not your typical teenager. Ever since her mom abandoned her and her father when she was just a young child, her dad's basically given up on life, leaving Chelsea to handle the running of their household. Her fellow cheerleaders main concern is which exotic beach they're going to be spending their next vacation on, whereas Chelsea has to be concerned with the overdue notice that came for the electricity bill, how to stretch twenty dollars in groceries for a week, and how on earth she's going to be able to come up with this year's cheer fees.
However, there may just be an answer to all of Chelsea's struggles. See back before her dad stopped being a parent, he taught her something that just might get her out of this whole mess, and that was teaching her her way around a card table. Chelsea's been playing poker since most kids were learning their ABC's, and after deciding she has no other option, she decides to take her card skills to a casino with low level security.
She may be underage and gambling illegally, lying to her friends and family, and getting in over her head in a romance with a young pit boss from the casino who has no idea about her true age, but sometimes a girl's gotta do what she's gotta do to save her family's situation. Unfortunately, as Chelsea falls into a deeper and darker pattern with the casino, she may just start to realize this has become way more than a means of making extra money.
Chelsea's situation was a tough one to read about. She has the weight of the world on her shoulder's at seventeen years old, and her parent's have given her no chance to be a kid. She's had to grow up way too fast, and in many ways,she has no idea how to relate to people her own age. I really felt for her character, despite the slow progression of the first half of the book, and I found myself starting to root for her.
My main problems with this book were the realistic factor. I found it extremely hard to believe that Chelsea's best friend wouldn't have said anything to anyone after finding out the truth about what she's been up to. As well, the first half of the book states over and over again what a responsible teenager Chelsea's been forced to become, and yet with one of her first big wins at the table she goes shopping for boots that eat up almost two hundred dollars of the fund. I could have completely understood her wanting to go shopping, but considering in every other shopping scene featured, she's at the goodwill, I found it hard to believe she truly would have spent that kind of money on a pair of boots when their electricity was about to be cut off. As well, after a win, we're told that Chelsea goes to a gas station to fill up her car fully, whereas usually she can only put ten dollars or so a time in her tank. She then, as the book states, only drives to school and back, and to the casino and back, and yet a couple of days later her gas tank is on empty, and it just didn't seem to add up.
My other main issue with this book was with the romance. I know Nate was much older than Chelsea, and it was definitely inappropriate, but that wasn't actually my main issue with it. It was the fact that I had a hard time swallowing the lies that Chelsea feeds Nate, and that he accepted them no question. Like asking him to meet her at a random convenience store because her place was too big of a mess for him to see? And changing the subject every time he asked her anything about herself? I find it hard to believe that a casino pit boss who picked up a young girl from the casino floor would be that easy to dupe, and I highly doubt he could have been that credulous towards all the secrets Chelsea was hiding from him. As well, the way things are between them at the end of the book just didn't seem believable to me, and so overall, I wasn't a huge fan of the romance element.
So this book was on it's way towards being a two star read for me, and then the ending happened. I know from reading other reviews from this book that a lot of people hated the ending, but I personally loved it, and I thought it made the book totally believable. With this ending, Julie Dill succeeded in making the message of her book come alive to me, and the ending bumped this up to a three star read for me. I also really hope that she doesn't choose to use the ending of this book to make it a sequel, and instead chooses to leave it exactly as she did.
I definitely will be recommending this one, as it's unlike anything I've read before, just be forewarned that it does come with it's fair share of its problems in my opinion.
Thanks so much to Netgalley for providing me with the opportunity to read this!
I thank you guys all for reading this, and I hope to be back soon with more reviews.
The picture does not belong to me, and all rights to the respective owner.
I've been reading so many great books the last couple of weeks, and I'm definitely behind in posting reviews for them.
So today I'm going to take the first steps towards getting back on track, and I'm going to post my review for Bluff by Julie Dill.
Source: ARC via NetGalley
Publisher: Amberjack Publishing
Publication Date: February 7th, 2017
I received an ARC copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are one hundred percent my own.
Synopsis:
Seventeen-year-old Chelsea Knowles is surrounded by the privileged. Michael Kors gym bags, and designer shoes are part of her daily scene, but the talented cheerleader has a secret: she and her dad can barely pay the bills. Broken by his wife walking out on their family, Chelsea's father ignores his responsibilities. Between cheer costs, grocery bills, electricity, and other regular financial burdens, it's no surprise when a cut-off notice arrives in the mail. Chelsea knows it'll be up to her to keep the lights on.
With the deck stacked against her, Chelsea decides to bet their future on the dubious poker knowledge she learned from her father before he gave up on parenting. Nervous but determined, Chelsea heads to a casino with very little security and wins big. Thrilled by her win, she's quickly drawn to the casino again and again. She risks it all, especially when the attractive, young pit boss takes an interest in her.
Chelsea's life, no longer filled with cheerleading, school and hanging out with her friends, is now consumed by smoky casino floors and the ups and downs of a gambler's life. True gambler's know when to fold, but Chelsea keeps betting long after her needs are met. The complicated web of lies soon begins to spin out of control, threatening to expose everything. Will someone see through her bluff?
Review:
Bluff was a novel I was originally attracted to because of it's unique synopsis. I'm all for trying out YA books about topics that I've never read before, and this one being about a teenage girl who turns to gambling to help her home life situation is definitely unlike anything I'd ever read before. I found this book definitely had it's ups and downs, and it started out a tad slow for me, but I did end up enjoying it overall, despite having a few issues throughout the plot line.
Chelsea is not your typical teenager. Ever since her mom abandoned her and her father when she was just a young child, her dad's basically given up on life, leaving Chelsea to handle the running of their household. Her fellow cheerleaders main concern is which exotic beach they're going to be spending their next vacation on, whereas Chelsea has to be concerned with the overdue notice that came for the electricity bill, how to stretch twenty dollars in groceries for a week, and how on earth she's going to be able to come up with this year's cheer fees.
However, there may just be an answer to all of Chelsea's struggles. See back before her dad stopped being a parent, he taught her something that just might get her out of this whole mess, and that was teaching her her way around a card table. Chelsea's been playing poker since most kids were learning their ABC's, and after deciding she has no other option, she decides to take her card skills to a casino with low level security.
She may be underage and gambling illegally, lying to her friends and family, and getting in over her head in a romance with a young pit boss from the casino who has no idea about her true age, but sometimes a girl's gotta do what she's gotta do to save her family's situation. Unfortunately, as Chelsea falls into a deeper and darker pattern with the casino, she may just start to realize this has become way more than a means of making extra money.
Chelsea's situation was a tough one to read about. She has the weight of the world on her shoulder's at seventeen years old, and her parent's have given her no chance to be a kid. She's had to grow up way too fast, and in many ways,she has no idea how to relate to people her own age. I really felt for her character, despite the slow progression of the first half of the book, and I found myself starting to root for her.
My main problems with this book were the realistic factor. I found it extremely hard to believe that Chelsea's best friend wouldn't have said anything to anyone after finding out the truth about what she's been up to. As well, the first half of the book states over and over again what a responsible teenager Chelsea's been forced to become, and yet with one of her first big wins at the table she goes shopping for boots that eat up almost two hundred dollars of the fund. I could have completely understood her wanting to go shopping, but considering in every other shopping scene featured, she's at the goodwill, I found it hard to believe she truly would have spent that kind of money on a pair of boots when their electricity was about to be cut off. As well, after a win, we're told that Chelsea goes to a gas station to fill up her car fully, whereas usually she can only put ten dollars or so a time in her tank. She then, as the book states, only drives to school and back, and to the casino and back, and yet a couple of days later her gas tank is on empty, and it just didn't seem to add up.
My other main issue with this book was with the romance. I know Nate was much older than Chelsea, and it was definitely inappropriate, but that wasn't actually my main issue with it. It was the fact that I had a hard time swallowing the lies that Chelsea feeds Nate, and that he accepted them no question. Like asking him to meet her at a random convenience store because her place was too big of a mess for him to see? And changing the subject every time he asked her anything about herself? I find it hard to believe that a casino pit boss who picked up a young girl from the casino floor would be that easy to dupe, and I highly doubt he could have been that credulous towards all the secrets Chelsea was hiding from him. As well, the way things are between them at the end of the book just didn't seem believable to me, and so overall, I wasn't a huge fan of the romance element.
So this book was on it's way towards being a two star read for me, and then the ending happened. I know from reading other reviews from this book that a lot of people hated the ending, but I personally loved it, and I thought it made the book totally believable. With this ending, Julie Dill succeeded in making the message of her book come alive to me, and the ending bumped this up to a three star read for me. I also really hope that she doesn't choose to use the ending of this book to make it a sequel, and instead chooses to leave it exactly as she did.
I definitely will be recommending this one, as it's unlike anything I've read before, just be forewarned that it does come with it's fair share of its problems in my opinion.
Thanks so much to Netgalley for providing me with the opportunity to read this!
I thank you guys all for reading this, and I hope to be back soon with more reviews.
The picture does not belong to me, and all rights to the respective owner.
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