intense book about first love. it is a great read, I felt so many emotions reading this. definitely worth reading this.

I'm very sorry to say that I did not like this. “Her lithe figure is highlighted by nicely proportioned hips and a medium bustline.” This line is very weird, and there were more like this. It's obvious that a man wrote this and I guess that could be okay but this gave me some fetishising feels and I'm not here for that. I started to get annoyed pretty fast by everything. Other than that, it just felt very basic to me.

Read November 2020

Asher has just split up with her boyfriend. It didn't feel right and now she's worried she'll never fall in love. But then at a school event she spots new student Robin and feels like she must get to know her.

She soon finds out that Robin is friendly and easy to talk to, they become best friends fast and all too soon Asher begins to feel odd whenever she sees Robin with her boyfriend. Jealousy maybe? But then Robin breaks up with him and the two girls become close. Close enough that Asher finally learns what being in love feels like.

However the pair live in a small, religious town in Texas so things are not smooth sailing and Robin's father is particularly bigoted. The young couple are discovered and outed, resulting in Robin's father separating the two and Robin treating Asher awfully.

This is a reasonably well-written book that drags you through the ups and downs of first love. Everything moved very fast, possibly too fast though that is typical of teenage relationships.

The book was written by a man which seemed especially obvious during the sex scenes, particularly all the talk of their breasts, it just didn't feel particularly genuine to me. Also that ending?! all that build up for basically nothing. I was so annoyed!

Wow, Robin's Lake Road is a powerful novel by CL Avery. Do not for one minute by fooled into thinking this is a happy story. It is not. Not at all. This is pure tragedy. The ending is hard to deal with for sure.

When we first meet Ash, she's a high school senior who's confused, questioning why she's never been in love before. Then she meets Robin. What follows is a gripping tale of sexual discoveries, sexual exploration, and an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything I've read before.

This lesbian story of Ash and Robin is one of intense highs and intense lows. This coming of age tale is heavy on the homophobia. I am still in shock at how intense and deep this story is. Focusing on first love and self loathing, loving oneself and self acceptance, it's a multi-layered story, full of extreme twists and turns.

Ultimately, this tragic tale reminds the reader to never give up, as you never know what's coming next. Always remember that life goes on.


An absolutely powerful read, Robin's Lake Road is well worth a read. Just be sure to save this CL Avery book for when you're in the mood for a depressing and serious read

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley for an honest review. I wish I could say I loved it, but unfortunately, I didn’t. The characters were very immature and it drove me a little crazy that they called each other “baby” in just about every sentence. I usually read about a book a day, but this one took me 10 days to finish.

I did not finish this book, though I did read the last few chapters because I had a bad feeling it was going to hit some of the usual gay tropes. Spoiler: it did! It ticks off "Out of the closet, into the fire" (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OutOfTheClosetIntoTheFire) and "Bury your gays/Dead lesbian" (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuryYourGays)

It wasn't just a lesson on how not to write an LGBT novel, but the writing was very ordinary. The build-up was completely contrived; no conversation or description seemed realistic.

A problematic and trope-filled YA lesbian romance that I do not recommend at all. We don't need more tragic gay stories.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. I really enjoyed this book. It was very sweet. Characters were lovely and well developed. Such a sensitive subject written so beautifully.

Received for free via Netgalley for an honest review. I see the reviews are all over the place for this book. Now I am not sure if there was a re-edit done on this book but there does seem to be a new cover. Most of this book is so good and you will be surfing alond and and then, WHAT??? how does that fit and where are the repercussions for the action. I admit I too had thoughts of, this is crap..and then the book gets right back to surfing along. You think the book is near end and see your at 30 percent..and then again this happens and again. I think the book could still use a few touch ups and then I could give it a 5. A very entertaining read for the most part.

I was a bit let down with Robin’s Lake. I really wanted to like this, because it's hard to find YA lesfic. The build up to Asher and Robin’s relationship was great. I liked the nervous flirtation. It was sweet seeing Asher discover that she likes girls and how to approach Robin. But it got too convoluted and careless. I feel like if Robin had gone through so much before, she wouldn’t be doing the same. Even as a teenager. It just didn’t work for me after getting through the first forty percent of the novel.

I have to say, I was not surprised wheni found out that C. L. Avery was male. The story doesn't read as someone who has been a teenage girl and knows the complexity that goes into it. The characters come off as one dimensional to me.

The overall story was cute and with more development of the scenes and characters could have been pretty good, but the inauthentic dialogue and relationship pulled away from the enjoyableness of it.

The story never felt for me. I couldn't dislike the main characters nor did I find their relationship believable.
Asher was more obsessed with Robin rather than in love with her. Robin knows she's gay, her family moved once already because of it, so why would she be extremely careless and so obvious of her attraction for Asher.

The way the girls acted at school was a dead giveaway that they were more than friends. I found the whole hot-cold vibes so tedious and Robin's attitude towards Asher like it was her fault for all the wrong things in her life too dramatic especially as it was Robin who made the first move.

I might have enjoyed this story more had it focused instead on the obsession that Asher had towards Robin rather than dress it up as love.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

#RobinsLakeRoad #NetGalley

I wanted to love this book so much, but I just couldn't. I thought that the characters read like they were more younger than they are. I found it difficult to deal with Robin's way of talking to Asher after they were outed on Twitter and couldn't believe that Asher would take her back.
I had a hard time with the homophobic language that some characters would use like being gay was a choice and we needed to be "cured".

Maybe this wasn't for me if I was rating on how much I enjoyed the story it would be a 2 stars read, however having said that there is a fantastic supportive friendship and good character development I will give this 3 stars.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

#RobinsLakeRoad #NetGalley

This story I can't commend because it felt so inauthentic through and through. It's a lesbian romance and a first love combined, but the characters behaved more like they were middle grade than seniors in high-school, and there was this idea running through the first 25% of the novel (which is all I could manage to read) that suggested nobody in this novel had even so much as imagined a same sex romance, let alone recognized the existence of the queer population in the world around them, on the Internet, and in the news.

Even in Oklahoma, the gay world is known! As recently as 2014, a ban on same-sex marriage was overturned in the not-so OK state, so you'd have to be shamefully ignorant of your world to not have this idea of diversity of sexual preference and gender identity in your head just from politics, let lone what's in the news and the media. You wouldn't know that from reading this novel though! It was so unrealistic that I couldn't take it seriously.

The story begins with Asher Sullivan who is so ready to graduate and attend a prestigious arts college. She’s concerned that she's never been in love, but things begin to change at a school event. The problem with the event is that Asher doesn't want to be there, yet she stays, and no reason is offered for it. She has to go to begin with to set up her photographic exhibition, but after that, she could have left immediately and no one would have even noticed one missing student, let alone said anything to her about it, yet she stays, and it quickly becomes obvious that the only reason she did was so this other event could happen to her. It was staged, artificial, and unrealistic.

The event is when she meets Robin O’Leary, and again, this felt so fake as to be off-putting. Robin is a talented singer and she's a newcomer to the school, so for Asher to not really have registered the arrival of a sort of minor 'celebrity' in their midst is ridiculous, especially when she's supposed to be a senior photographer for the school. Even if she's not that sort of person, not part of the in-crowd and not interested, she would have had to at least have some idea of who this person was, and seen her in the hallway or at lunch, but no! What this tells me is that Asher is one of the most blinkered main characters I've ever encountered, and I lost all interest in reading anything more about her because she was presented as a completely boring person.

She wasn't an effective character to begin with because after the overture about her going to study photography at this college (if she can get in) and her setting up the pictures at the school event, that's it! Photography essentially disappears from the story! Not only is it not a topic, with nothing photographic going on, and it's not even talked about, but Asher never even spares a single thought about photography. She never has a camera with her and it never even crosses her mind to register, say, how beautiful something is that she observes as she goes about her business, or how the light is, or how a person or object looks in that light. Naturally you don't want a story to be weighed down with nothing but that, but if you tell me photography is going to be her life, then I expect it to be a part of her life already. To rob your character of that is to gut her. And that's how Asher appeared. She had nothing whatsoever in her life save for her lust for all things Robin and it made her one note and shallow.

Even after Asher and Robin have become something of an item, it never once crosses Asher's mind to photograph Robin! Asher has to be pushed into an offer of taking Robin's portrait by her own best friend, which is just ridiculous. What this tells me is that Asher isn't a photographer at all and photography is just a thing that's been crudely hung on her character in a weak attempt to give her some depth. It doesn't work, and someone so lacking in wherewithal abotu her chosen subject, is never going to get into any prestigious college. My guess was that the portrait thing would turn out to be a make-out session because it seemed so obvious a move, but I wasn't interested enough in either character to want to read about it.

The means by which she and Robin get together has no basis at all. As the book blurb says, they're at opposite ends of the social spectrum, yet Robin seems unaccountably transfixed by Asher from the start, and no reason at all is given for this, not in words or in actions. It felt fake from the start, and when we're offered no sound and realistic basis for the relationship to begin with, who really cares what becomes of it? I didn't, and I can't commend this as a worthy read.

This was a real out of left field book for me--and I'll try not to get into unfair generalizations about a male author writing in a female voice or writing a F/F love story (I think?), but right off of the bat something just felt "off" about the voice of Ash the MC, her internal journey of self discovery, and all of the dialogue between her and Robin. Throughout the book, there's just this juvenile feeling about all of the characters which isn't necessarily a surprise being that I think this may be a YA title and the characters are all in high school. However, there are some really weird and uncomfortable moments that would fall to extremes of stalking and unhealthy obsession but are treated by the author as love, with no consequences for the MC. Both Ash and Robin are very troubled young women, and there were times I could swear this was going to take a Heavenly Creatures-esque turn. All I can really say about this entire strange story is that it's troubling and problematic in its treatment of first love, with even a more puzzling throwback to the themes of lesbian-themed pulp novels of having to "punish" the lesbian(s) for their "deviations." I think I may have enjoyed this story had it instead focused on obsession and called it what it actually was, instead of coloring it as love. This story never clicked for me; I did not like these main characters nor did I find their relationship authentic or their dialogue written naturally, it's a pet peeve of mine to have underage drinking completely normalized and void of any taboo (going so far as to even have a character call out that since they had just graduated high school, no one in town was bothering to card them), and even supporting characters were one note and existed simply as foils.
I would recommend avoiding this book at all costs; it is a massive trigger warning.

Robin's Lake Road is not the story that I thought I was getting. I thought I was getting a teenage lesbian love story which is what is typically being published these days. It seems like every story about teenage queer people that I've read lately is full of queer teens with accepting parents and friends who love them and allow them to be themselves. While that is a lot of people's story it's not everyone's, so when I realized what Robin's Lake Road really was, a nuanced look at what happens when someone comes out in a small unaccepting town and the lengths that some people will go to because of their Christian values, I screamed for joy.

I gave this book 4 stars and advise queer people to beware when they embark upon this read. There are lots of triggering scenes and scenarios.

Read if you’re queer and love seeing yourself in books or if you’re not queer and want an intimate look of what life is like for some LGBTQ youth. A lot of the story was spot on for me and my friends during our high school days.

Thanks to net galley.com, author C.L. Avery and BooksGoSocial for the advance ARC copy for my honest review.

I just found "Robin's Lake Road" to be a hot mess, this was my first read from author C.L. Avery, while I did finish it, at times the author ruins the story, liked the Asher character and he easily could have written a better story.
The author kills the storyline by first having Robin and Asher talk about her dad finding out, then he walks in on them, you also have Asher's ex-boyfriend be in their secret hideaway, that really isn't, then takes a picture of them kissing and posts it on social media.

Then the end of the book has too much going on, just seems to ramble quickly verse actually making sense, the two main characters flip personality on who is strong and weak and in the end you realize the untouched mental illness issues with Robin's family by the author.

So you have Robin, who knows she's gay, her family moved once already because of it and her dad's a nut job. Then you have Asher who the author seems to make so cool, be strong, yet she's weak, not until she see's Robin for the first time, she has feels that she never experienced before and her best friend Orm helps her to under stand everything. Let me add the story would have been better if Asher was written as being strong and Robin the weak personality.

Put yourself in the head of Robin, you've moved once due to your father finding out your gay. So why would you be careless, you got the cover boyfriend, so it would have made the story better had Asher been written to be stronger, wasn't jealous of the fake boyfriend and they meet up at Orm's or her Grandma's house.

Then once they are caught, the way Robin talks to Asher afterwards no way would they ever get back together and been better to have Asher move onto the girl she kisses at the party. The other huge hangup for me was M.E. Tudor's book "Suddenly", she just wrote a way better ending, plus it's positive, the story about two girls that fight for their relationship. The two discover along the way someone very close to one of them that supports their relationship and even helps to keep them together.

I'd give this 2.5 stars, it's also a book where I'd love to see another author take this storyline, then add and remove a few elements to the story and re-write it.

I'm still confused about the ending. I get that the author was trying to send the message of being true to yourself but it also seems like certain serious plot points were only used for the sake of drama.

***SPOILERS***
Don't be fooled by the cute cover. Robin's Lake Road is a coming-of-age tale, but I'm tired of the queer pain narrative. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I’m sure this book will resonate with others but there wasn’t much that I could personally connect to in the story, outside of the hesitation to come out and be true to yourself. I thought the author did a pretty good job of describing that moment in the characters lives.

The ending of this book left me speechless. It’s hard to come home again.

Asher Sullivan is a high school senior looking forward to graduation in small-town rural Oklahoma. High school life is pretty typical. She has a boyfriend, but meh about him. Things drastically change when Asher meets Robin, a new girl in school, and everything she thought she knew about herself is turned upside down.
The two girls are socially diverse, as Robin’s family has great wealth and Asher lives a modest life with her grandmother as her guardian. Still, the two become close friends. That friendship rather quickly morphs into a wild, exciting and very physical love relationship. The love making is described very visually, yet is sweet.

As the relationship becomes known around the high school things become ugly. Of course social media is at the heart of the pain. Robin’s secret baggage begins to drag her down at Asher’s expense.
Then the story moves from hurt to tragic and I couldn’t read fast enough. I hurt for these two families all struggling in their own way. Yes, I even felt for Mr. and Mrs. O’Leary. They love their daughter and thought they were doing what was best for her. Narrow mindedness though was the downfall.

The story, As I began reading I felt started sort of frivolous. There was much focus on fashion... the black skinny jeans, the tourquoise long sleeve button-up with frills...
But then I began thinking that this is written for teens and fashion and appearances is where they live. The book is by no means slow, but it is a slow burn as Asher and a Robin begin to allow who they really are to emerge. Both girls have boyfriends as the story begins.

The book is intense, confusing, not in content, but in emotions and maddening. I felt out of control as I tried to identify with the raw emotions.

I suppose the audience is young adult, but reader must know the language and sex in this story is extremely mature.
I feel another audience for the book would be parents who have children emerging into the gay lifestyle. The book was open and honest and I did not feel judgemental on either points of view.

This book took me on a journey of young love. Intensity and need, desire and darkness. The character development was steady and almost unnoticeable until the realisation that they had grown and developed came.it was a thoroughly enjoyable read that o struggled to put down.