How about that NA? One Tiny Lie by K.A. Tucker

You might remember my wee bit of discomfort reading Ten Tiny Breaths, which I had thought was YA when I added it to my TBR list. If you've looked at my reading lists, I read many different types of books, not just YA by any means, but I was startled by the level of sexiness even as I was quickly drawn to the characters, especially Storm, and their dilemmas. This discomfort didn't stop me from continuing to read it, or from ultimately really enjoying this book (and wanting to read all the sequels immediately), but it did make me do a little research. That's what I do when something confuses me or startles me or surprises me; I research it until I understand it better. I found out that Ten Tiny Breaths is NA, or New Adult for the newly initiated, as I was until I read Sarah Pekkanen's These Girls and saw that it was called NA. At first I had thought this meant Not Applicable. Or Not Allowed. Or what? It didn't make sense. Then I looked it up and learned about this "new" genre, and it turns out to mean New Adult, as in college-aged characters or so, and probably more sex than in your average YA, but maybe not as much as in adult lit, but not Adult lit. Got it? Clear as mud, right? Well, These Girls is no Ten Tiny Breaths, at least on the sexiness level, though I can see other similarities, such as age, of course.

You might also remember that I am not a big fan of genres in general, since I think it limits people's reading choices as often as it guides them, e.g. "I'm too old for YA," or "I don't do chick lit." Take Margaret Atwood, for example, a true favorite of mine, and her work can and has been easily categorized as: science fiction, dystopian fiction, feminist literature, thriller, chick lit, and mystery, all in the very same book. So my discomfort. I don't read erotica. I have, but I don't. I prefer to read other things. And no, I haven't and don't plan to read Fifty Shades of anything, though seemingly everyone else on the planet has. Thanks but no. And Ten Tiny Breaths was a little closer to erotica (as far as I know) than my usual comfort zone, and somehow this makes it NA. Whatever it is, on I went to the sequel as quickly as my library could get it for me.

Which brings us to One Tiny Lie, or Livie's Trip to Princeton Because That's What Her Father Would Have Wanted. I think this is an interesting direction for a sequel, to move on almost entirely to another character who featured much less majorly in the first book and spin out her story. I realized on the first page how little I really knew about Livie or what Livie thought of anything, other than that she loved her family and was good at school and with little kids. What quickly becomes apparent is how little Livie knows about Livie; cue the ever-present family shrink who "cured" Kacey and maybe Trent in the first book. Add in a wacky roommate and a super-hot meet-cute and a little trouble in school for the first time, and it all sounds so formulaic, except somehow it isn't. This one is sexy, too, but somehow more innocently sexy, since Livie knows nothing yet attracts everything, and I'm pretty sure I know how it will all turn out, but none of that matters. I care about Livie and want to know every little thing about her. Just like Ashton. Uh huh, just friendly-like.

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