Tome Thursday: She's Too Young

Hello everyone!

This week's book of choice is slightly different in terms of both content and length, because I was honestly surprised when I opened it to see it's not even one hundred (reading) pages long. That's something you don't usually get to see when you sit down with any kind of book, so it was intriguing enough to begin with.

Also, the title caught me.

And then I was redirected to the author's site, and I read her explanation about the book, and I was thoroughly hooked, but not in a bad way.

See, Jessa Kane's 'She's Too Young' is a book describing a relationship between a seventeen-year-old high school student, and a thirty-year-old powerful magnate. If this isn't your cup of tea (and for many people it wouldn't be), stop reading this review right here and right now, and you'll be fine. You can even go off and spout how I'm supporting something horrible and terrible, if you want.

That's okay. As Ms Kane says - we all have the right to make our own choices about what we do and don't like, or do and don't read, in this case.

Under the line, though, is my review of 'She's Too Young'.

There isn't that much to actually SAY about a story that's this short at the end of the day, but I was fascinated by the fact that Amazon removed it from sales very quickly after it went up, presumably because they received complaints about the content, or so the author says. In response, she has made the first of the two books available on her site, which is actually really cool of her, come to think of it.

I'm not so sure many authors would do that.

Anyway, in our story, Veda (this is pronounced Vay-da) is a high school student attending a corporate party with her father, who works for said corporation, when she runs into Ramsey Beckett standing on a ledge VERY high up above New York city.

Minor note: this story is told from his point of view, not hers, just so we're clear.

From the second Ramsey sets eyes on Veda (who is a blonde haired, blue eyed, typical beautiful teenager who turns men's heads anywhere she goes), he wants her. And not as in 'I want to marry her' wants her but 'I want to get her out of her clothes YESTERDAY' wants her.

Yeah. This will be tricky for some readers. And I won't say I didn't angle my head around like a little bird occassionally, but I think the fact that we're inside his head actually helps in this scenario.

Anyway.

About two seconds into meeting, the two are already kissing, and it's obvious Veda is also attracted to him (as opposed to the unfeeling monster he usually sees in the mirror, other people generally describe him as someone who's not shabby to look at, just distant and arrogant), when her father catches them. Ramsey, seeing the problem, does the one thing guaranteed to make some readers hurl this book far away from them.

He buys Veda from her father and becomes her legal guardian, sending her dad to the Netherlands.

Where's her mother? Unfortunately out of the picture.

So Veda moves in with Ramsey, clueless just why, exactly, this is all happening - but not necessarily as clueless in certain other aspects. Obviously, she knows that men tend to do insane things when she's around her, so she spends most of the book literally driving Ramsey crazy.

This culminates at a parent-teacher conference he has to go to (oh yeah, that's super funny, actually!) after which he takes her virginity in the back of his limo. Not necessarily gently, either.

I told you this stuff isn't for the faint hearted.

Afterwards, it becomes a game of push and pull between them, as Ramsey will literally do just about anything just to have her again and again and again, and Veda isn't stupid; there's a reason she's excelling all her classes, she's got brains behind that pretty face and she's going to use them to get what she wants, which includes but isn't limited to a new wardrobe, sex pretty much whenever she wants it, and getting Ramsey to fire all the women in his company who she deems too beautitul to be around him.

Trouble in paradise ensues when she figures out just what he did with her father, at which point she up and leaves him regardless that the contract he signed states she has to legally stay with him until she hits eighteen.

Ramsey does NOT take her leaving well. He admits that even waiting for the five days it took her to move in with him was difficult, so this is literally spinning all his wheels out of control, and not only do we see how desperately he craves her, but we also get the sense that, quite literally, he might actually jump off the ledge this time if something doesn't happen.

Luckily, he's smart too: he spells out her name on top of his tallest building which brings her back to him, despite the fact that she still hates him, but she also realises she needs him (in the physical sense, not the metaphorical one at the moment), and the contract is still on.

Of course, Ramsey also tells her he'll do whatever it takes (including make a deal with the Devil) to ensure she doesn't walk away from him, but that's okay.

We already know he's obsessed.

This was certainly a different read and a power play from start to finish, and while I've read some reviews that complain about Veda's behaviour I kind of think it's actually pretty much what a teenage girl's would be - that is, a teenage girl's who's figuring out her sexuality and the power she has over a man who can pretty much give her anything and everything she wants, including the world, probably. The most telling is this comment, all in all:

“Veda. Angel.” I press my open mouth against her neck. 

“If you’d lost that necklace in the ocean, I would order the goddamn thing drained to get it back.”

And there you have it!

Like I said before, this isn't necessarily a story most people will want to read or even enjoy, but for me it was mostly a challenge to see just WHAT made Amazon remove it - and I honestly have to say that, apart from the heroine being seventeen, I didn't see anything necessarily WRONG that I haven't read in other books. There's books galore of asshole men doing exactly the same things to women on a fairly regular basis (from the buying to the spoiling to the sex), so the age is really the only thing that's 'questionable'.

But it kind of works? Does that make me sound weird?

Hopefully not. It's obviously not a book I'm going to be recommending to my young cousin (duh), but if she wants to read it of her own free will to check it out someday when she's old enough to make her own choices - why not?

xx

*image not mine