REVIEW: My Sweetest Escape by Chelsea M. Cameron

My Sweetest Escape by Chelsea M. Cameron is a New Adult book following a similar cast of characters to that of My Favourite Mistake.  I remember having issues with My Favourite Mistake when I read it but nothing major enough for me to not read the sequel. Unfortunately, not many details of the My Favourite Mistake stayed with me and it took far longer than necessary for me to realise that the Hunter and Taylor being mentioned in this book were the two main characters from that book. Whoops. 

Let me start with the few niggles that I had with this book.  I'm not a huge fan of the 'New adult' label. I really don't think that the label or subcategory is needed at all. Especially in cases such as My Sweetest Escape. The big thing with new adult is supposedly this unique age range in which people are going off to university and making their way in the world that is somehow different and more mature than when younger teenagers find their own identities and so on in high school.  I felt like some minor aspects of My Sweetest Escape could have been changed and the entire story could have been told in a high school environment. There wasn't enough of university life or being independent that I felt warranted a new adult label other than mentions of sexual activity.

The second thing I slightly rolled my eyes at was this combination of virgin girl and experienced boy. Why is this ever necessary?! (answer: never.)

My Sweetest Escape tells the story of Jos, a freshman at university who has been forced into switching schools and living in a house with her older sister, Renee and Renee's flatmates - Hunter and Taylor, Paul, Darah and Mason, all characters (I'm assuming as I don't quite remember them all) from My Favourite Mistake. This forced move is down to Jos's partying and wild behaviour following some traumatic event that her friends and family know nothing about. This is another aspect of the story that I found slightly irritating. Jos is 18 and yet Renee treats her like she's ten years younger than she is and continues to treat her like a child even after Jos displays absolutely zero wild or bad behaviour. The mind boggles.

But don't feel as though I absolutely hated the book despite how many criticisms this review contains. There were definitely aspects of the book that I did enjoy. It was interesting to see Jos's friendship forming with a fellow classmate, Hannah and their Buffy watching marathons. I quite enjoyed Jos's relationship with her sister, Renee as well and how much Jos changes from being very closed off at the start and how living with a bunch of caring people who adopt Jos into their 'family' makes her more open.

And while I'd have much preferred to see how much Dusty had changed from his bad boy past to that of his present state, I did think he was quite sweet. There was definitely lots of likeability and personality coming from Dusty and it was nice to see Jos and Dusty trying to resist their attraction to each other.  My Sweetest Escape was a very cute and easy contemporary romance to read. I read it very quickly and while I did want it to be more it was still a satisfying read.