I'm really surprised by how flat I found Into Your Arms. I enjoyed the author's earlier NA romances, particularly For Real and My Favorite Mistake. But I found myself repeatedly checking if the author of those fun college romances was the same as this shallow, repetitive, listless story.

Freya is a recent transfer from Texas to Maine where she wants to pursue her college cheer career and figure out her origins. Other than her name, there is nothing particularly likable about Freya. The way she treats Rhett, her parents, surrogate parents, friends, and everyone around her shows how emotionally withdrawn, childish, overwrought, and self-centered this chick is.

And if you dislike Freya, then it makes it more difficult to understand why Rhett pursues her as ardently as he does. Rhett is some kind of lumbersexual cheerleading savant (he joins the squad just to get close to Freya) who has endless patience with Freya constantly dismissing his interest in her with such cutting, sophisticated remarks like, "You're so weird" like some emotionally stunted pre-teen. Rhett cooks for her and endures rounds of her emotional outbursts. Frankly, I couldn't understand what he found attractive about her in the first place.

Here's an example of Freya's frequent flyer freakouts:(view spoiler)

Every time Freya is upset about something, she runs and hides in her apartment. Although she claimed to have transferred to Maine to (view spoiler), the only thing Freya ever does is eat junk food, complain about Rhett, and have sex with Rhett. Then, (view spoiler) And even though Freya admits to herself she didn't handle it well and should apologize to Rhett, she still makes the poor guy grovel over and over. My eyes hurt from rolling.

I really hope the author returns to her earlier style of writing where the characters were original and sweet, as I think I'm done with this cheer squad.

Review Into Your Arms was a nice, gentle read. The characters and story were sweet and I really liked how the main characters were cheerleaders and how that whole aspect was spun with a very positive steer.

For me the story started really well and I was intrigued as to how the plot and story was going to pan out, however, the middle section of the book stalled a little for me and felt somewhat repetitive. The last 40% of the story though was great and really picked up and it ended on a real high.

Overall an ok read for me.

This book was actually almost DNF for me until about the 40% mark. I thought the beginning was slow and also very monologue-ish. There was barely any communication between the main characters until later in the novel when they became first friends and then lovers. While I didn't love the story, I am glad I kept reading because Rhett was absolutely adorable and sweet. I just loved him. I liked Freya much less, mostly because she treated Rhett like shit and I guess based on her background, I can kind of guess why she was standoffish but her character might have been written a little too harshly.

Rhett is a good man, and how I can tell you ask, well the boy knows how to cook, any man that's sexy, sweet, and cook is good in my book, “glad you enjoyed it. Anytime you want some more, just let me know. I can also make enchiladas, tacos, baked spaghetti, chili, and a ton of other things. Come over anytime. What are friends for?” She rolls her eyes." Rhett knows how to read his woman, “about why you’re using sex to avoid talking to me about whatever is bothering you and made you show up at my work today.” I squint at him." Whhen it comes to food sharing, Rhett is logical, “we’ve had each other’s junk in our mouths. I think we can share a plate..." I really loved this book, Rhett had so much patience.

I requested this book because I have enjoyed others from the author but this one didn't work for me. I did finish the book and thought the end was better, but the writing felt rushed or off and the story was too predictable.

I enjoyed this book

I requested this book via Netgalley because I have loved many other books by this author. But not this one. I tried. I read another book and then came back to this one... I just couldn't. The writing threw me off balance. It was shallow. As if the author was in a rush to meet a deadline. Within the first two pages the main female character is all "I don't wanna be attracted but I am. But I must not be." I couldn't even get past the second chapter. Will not read another book in this series or by the author. :/

5/3.5
I received an ARC copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange of an honest review.

Why did I request this book? First of all, I absolutely loved the author My favorite mistake series. Then there s the pretty cover which always helps and I also found the synopsis intriguing. Overall, I liked the book well enough, it’s a cute and sweet little romance story, which is also light and quick. However, I’m not a cute love story kind of a girl and I had a few issues with the main character too. So in the end it only falls into the middle ground for me.

Let’s start with the writing style. I didn’t expect anything horrible since I read a couple of other books from the author; still I found I few things worth mentioning. The biggest one is that the story mostly reads really fluidly and easily but there are a couple of instances where I got the impression as if I was reading a telegraph from the old ages. You know how they communicate them, the dear xy stop I miss you stop ect. This manly happened in the beginning of the story and wouldn’t say it’s something really bad but definitely strange and caused a disconnection between sentences, paragraphs. Then there are a lot of contradictions in the story, in one sentence even. Like they start the sentence saying something but finish it stating the complete opposite of it. It wasn’t that noticeable but after a while it started to confuse the storyline a bit. Other than this the writing is pretty solid, interesting even with the tendencies to highlight the strangest, most uncommon elements from the plot which I found absolutely delightful and even funny.
Loosely connected to this, but more about the plot than the writing is the fact that it contains a lot of stereotype regarding the roles or preferences of man and women. I didn’t love the judgmental effect it put on the whole book, especially onto one of the main characters but fortunately the other character disprove these particular motions really quickly and effectively.
Also regarding the plot I found it pretty original and interesting to see another side to the cheerleader lifestyle opposing to the usual slutty, bully kind of cheerleaders from YA contemporary. Not to mention it is a really big part of the storyline and the author presents it accordingly. With a lot of little details and shows the hard work her characters put into it. Yet I also think it’s a bit overdone, there is too much focus to it and takes up more time in the book than it would be ideal. Especially since the characters Rhett and Freya has a lot of other intriguing parts in their life that doesn’t get enough attention.

Well, as for the main characters one of them surprised me and the other annoyed me to no ends. We see the story from both of their points of views and what is true about both of them that they are not the usual personalities I encounter in contemporary books a leads.
Let’s start with Rhett. The first impression I got about him in the very first chapter wasn’t all that pleasing but something I find in a lot of new adult romance. He seemed like someone who perfected picking up girls into an art form and a good looking fellow with a healthy dose of arrogance. I geared myself up for him being like this in the rest of the book too, but boy was I wrong. As I started to read the second chapter my whole opinion started to change about him surely and quickly. He is charming and even sweet, caring with a lot of uncommon traits, like his dorkiness or love for old school and long words. He is honest and persistent and mostly patient. He has a lot of awkward moments where he doesn’t know what to do but you can see that he sincerely tries and cares. But around the end of the story he started to feel a bit too cheesy and too much of a pushover, or not even that but he gets a lot of shit from Freya and her friends still he is patiently waits her out. I want one for myself.
Then we got Freya whom I disliked from the moment she first talked. She has a really negative vibe going on about her with all of her misplaced bitterness caused by her not so stellar decisions. She is hostile and defensive after the most basic conversations even especially towards Rhett. He is nice to her she practically bites his head off. Yes I get that she didn’t have a perfect childhood but Rhetts was worse yet he can act in a civilized fashion. But you know what; she overdramatized everything so why should I be surprised. Then there are little things like the arrogant way she talks about her talent and her new squad lack of it. But really the thing that I disliked the most about her was her attitude, the way she attacked and pushed away everybody who just simply talked to her or asked a slightly personal question. I mean she states that she hates Rhett for his sincerity, come on get real. Her constant fighting not just others but herself too gets tiring fast. And even there was the thing with her big secret, I really didn’t see what her deal is but I felt like she has a fairy tale idea or at least a bit of an ulterior motive regarding it. So simply said she annoyed me but I can’t deny that she and Rhett has an explosive chemistry, a really strong sexual tension between them. It took the story for a certain point bat around halfway through I started to get bored.
Oh one more thing about Freya, her so called firecracker personality as everybody describes her so not founded. Yes they say she is that but she doesn’t proves it with her actions and unfortunately in this particular book this telling not showing thing was true about the emotions, feelings too. They didn’t come through for me especially not the more serious ones.

For the supporting cast there are not too many of them and they had even less role or appearance in the story so I can’t really evaluate them. There was Jem, Rhett best friend the ultimate play boy who definitely has something going on. Or Tobi, Freya friend who is supportive but aggressively so and slightly overworked who doesn’t have time for the other gender. They are a bit superficially created but have potential so I assume they are going to get their own books.

In the end it is not a bad book, but doesn’t really fall into my preference category or among my favorites. For one read it was great especially since I only had a couple of hours to read and I easily finished it in that time but I didn’t fall in love with it.

DNF around 10%. This could not hold my interest. The heroine seemed a little childish and the hero wasn't anything special. I tried to keep going and I just couldn't.

I enjoyed the first book in this new series. Although I never was a cheerleader, I appreciated the positive portrayals of cheerleaders. I look forward to further stories featuring the supporting characters.