The Deal

Elle Kennedy

Publisher: Independent Publishing.

Date Released: The Kindle version was released February 24th 2018

Date Read: October 31st

Genre: New Adult, Erotica, Contemporary, Romance, College

Grade: 3.8 Stars/ C+

 

“Sometimes people sneak up on you and suddenly you don’t know how you ever lived without them.” 

― Elle Kennedy

Everyone but Hannah practically fails the classes midterm, including Garrett Graham, captain of the Briar University’s hockey team. Scared that he won’t be able to play anymore, he tries to convince Hannah to tutor him after he sees the A on her paper. Hannah wants nothing to do with Garrett, but she can’t resist his offer when he tells her he will help her win her crush over. Tutor sessions turn into a strange friendship and leaves them possibly wanting more.

I didn’t think I was going to pick this series up after reading the first book of it’s new spin off series, The Chase. But as I was looking through my library’s catalog I couldn’t help but wonder if they had the off-campus books. Surprisingly they did, and I couldn’t help myself. Something about these books had me wanting more, which really surprised me considering I thought I thought the Chase was a tinge cringy. Nether less, I couldn’t stop myself from getting The Deal. Now it’s safe to say the writing isn’t any better, which I assumed it wouldn’t be considering the Off-Campus series came first, but it wasn’t cringy, at least not what they were saying. They both talked normal and while the writing did take me a minute to get used to, when I finally got into it, I didn’t want to stop. I loved Garrett and Hannah’s story way more than I did Summer and Fitzy’s. From the first time these characters meet they have chemistry going for them. They work so well together. They were cute and i’m not sure how the rest of the series will top Garrett and Hannah.

 

Pros

• Hannah is very relatable, and maybe that’s just because I act like Hannah. Hannah likes loyalty, even if she doesn’t outright say it. When a girl goes behind Hannah’s back and helps to screw her over, Hannah tells the girl that she will not be friends with her, at least not any time soon. Hannah is somewhat on the anti-social side, but she refuses to let anyone walk over her, which makes a great match for Garrett. Hannah was willing to challenge him and others when she feels she is right. I liked reading Hannah’s character a lot.
• Garrett is incredibly charming and I loved every second he was in the story. Garrett has a big ego, basically every girl at school wants him and he knows it, but he’s an not asshole. He doesn’t want to hurt people. He is never really mean to Hannah and just wants her to enjoy herself. He is also very flirty, but in a good way. It didn’t seem like he was trying to hard, it was natural for him. I also liked reading his reactions to Hannah. How quickly he is ok with her just being in his company. Garrett had all the means to be a douchey asshole, but wasn’t. Instead the author took the guy with a big ego, and made him sweet and charming, which worked out amazingly well. I thought Fitzy was the dream boat, but Garrett kinda stole the thunder there. There’s also the fact that Garrett was the incredibly nice to Hannah when Hannah was out of it, I was scared something was going to happen to make me hate him, but it just made me love him more.
• The book takes serious issues such as rape and abuse and doesn’t make a mess of it. They explore both of them and show that neither of them are your fault, and that can be something you can overcome. I really liked how Hannah’s issue with rape was handled. Hannah is ok with men and doesn’t blame herself, but she does struggle with a different side effect of rape that therapy can’t exactly help her with. And no, it’s not a story of a girl falls in love with a guy and they’re cured of all of their problems. Hannah was already getting help for it all before she even meet Garrett, and had mostly come to terms with all of it and accepted that she was a survivor and she wouldn’t let it cripple her anymore. The abuse isn’t explored as much as Hannah’s past is, but I do like the way it is handled still. The author also doesn’t make it to heavy with the past trauma’s, so the story is more heart warming, instead of heart breaking. It’s a cute fun read that is realistic, not a sad read that takes a lot out of you.

 

Cons

• This book is nowhere near as cringy with the wording as it’s spin off was, but there was still a few things that made me cringe inside a little. I kept questioning how old the author was when I kept reading about how her characters love Selena Gomez, One Direction, and Justin Bieber, but then I remembered that I know girls who are in college right now and still cry when Justin Bieber is coming to our city, so I guess I can’t full on fault her for it, but it’s still something I personally find cringy, but at least this time I don’t feel like the character needs to be wearing Ugg boots and carrying a pumpkin spice latte. There is still some wording though that makes it hard to read at times. The author likes to abbreviate some words, and as someone who isn’t really into texting, and when I do I don’t tend to use a lot of abbreviations, it gets annoying having to stop and google what they mean. If she had wrote the abbreviations when it was characters texting, there would of been nothing I could complain about since people do text like that, but in the actually writing, having to stop mid paragraph to look up what a abbreviation means does make it harder for me to read. Luckily she doesn’t put to many in this book. I think there was only two I had to google.
• It once again had info dumping. Within the first page of the first chapter, the author tells you out of nowhere that Hannah was raped. There was no building to it, she just threw it out there that she was raped. It is literally the starting sentence of the third or so paragraph, She was talking about her crush and then just dropped the bomb that she has only loved two people since she was raped. It was literally just a bomb that was thrown on you, and I can tell author the knows how to not info dump, because she doesn’t do it with Garrett. She lets it unfold. Know, I can tell why she info dumped about Hannah’s rape. It plays a big part in Hannah’s story. She doesn’t like to go to parties, drink, or be around people in that situation because of what happened to her, it’s just the way it was thrown out there. It was basically Hannah going, “I have a crush on this football player. He’s really cute. Oh and i’ve been raped.” It is very important from the beginning of the story to know what happened to Hannah, it was just the way it was presented maybe messed it up.

 

The writing is still awkward at times. It does take a few chapters to get used to it, especially if you were reading a very thorough boo before coming to this one, but once Garrett and Hannah start talking to each other, the story flows a lot better. It happened in The Chase. The books just seem to have a little bit of a rocky start, but once they get the flow on it is smooth sailing from there. In both of the books of these I have read so far, I have stopped taking notes half way through the story about any weird writing. It’s possible it was there, I was just so in the story that I wouldn’t have noticed. You get so caught up in the characters and then trying to figure out their feelings, that you ignore how the story is written.

“What is wrong with you? Why aren’t you freaking out right now? Garrett Graham is sitting in your booth. He talked to you.”

“Holy shit, he did? I mean, his lips were moving, but I didn’t realize he was talking.” 

― Elle Kennedy, 

I loved reading how comfortable Garrett and Hannah were together. Before they even started to have feelings for each other you could see how they just enjoyed being in each other’s company. Just chilling out and watching movies together, even laying in the same bed without touching each other or trying to have sex with each other. They were content in just being there. They worked together very well. I enjoyed The Deal a lot. It satisfies my contemporary need, but I still plan on reading the rest. This book is still very sexual. It is classified as an erotica, but it’s also not the most descriptive or erotic book I’ve read and I tend to stay away from erotica’s. I think the most sexual book I’ve read is the Sookie Stackhouse series, and this isn’t as bad as that, at least not to me. They also did have sex a lot, like almost every time they saw each other after they had sex the first time, but it didn’t take over the story, so it wasn’t a con for me. I do plan on reading the rest, and I hope they can beat Garrett and Hannah, but I really loved them so I don’t know.

‘ “Don’t worry, I’m beating him up in my head, baby. That counts, right?”

She laughs. “Sure. I’ll allow it.” ‘

-Elle Kennedy

Also while reading I was scared that Garrett was going to be like Fitzy and Hannah was going to be like Summer. They were not from the very start. Garrett was nothing like Fitzy, and Hannah is nothing like Summer. I was scared that the author was going to have a hard time making her characters different but as soon as I started reading through Garrett’s point of view I knew instantly that was not the case. Garrett was most definitely his own character.