In Buenos Aires, where her father is the legal attache at the U.S. Embassy, sixteen-years-old Tess falls in love and tries to live the fast and free life of her friends until she discovers the devastating consequences of ignoring rules.

Tessa’s life changed when her family moved to Argentina. She met her new friends and fell in love with Lucient, the son of a French diplomat. Lucient changed as he went back from a trip from Rome with his mother. Tessa then learned that Lucient had an illness – mental illness. Soon, Lucient started to push Tessa away from his life without any explanation. Then Tessa found out why Lucient did that, and everything wasn’t the same. This book was probably about a young girl who had to face a few changes in her life. She started to hang around with the wrong people and fell in love with someone who is a bad influence to her.

I’m not sure what to say of this book. The writing was alright. Sadly, the plot was not. The beginning of the book was quite confusing. I wasn’t sure of what was happening to Tessa and her friends. The middle was a bit slow. But I can’t stop reading it because I expect something to happen. And it was towards the end when there’s finally something. It was really frustrating when a writer stashed everything important towards the ending. ( )

I'm struggling with what to say about this book. It's not that it was bad, because it wasn't. It just wasn't that good. It was fine. There's a nice description for you, right?

All I can say is that there's nothing technically wrong with it. It was well-written (though my ARC did have a few disconcerting typos and formatting errors). I just failed to connect with Tessa and the rest of the characters in any significant way. I could sympathize with her, sure. But overall I didn't care what happened to her or Lucien. There were also these long passages about how incredible Lucien was. How Tessa finally mattered because he loved her. How deep, and profound, and artistic, and creative, and mysterious he was. It got to the point where I was like, okay, I get it. I understand why Tessa is attracted to Lucien. Can we move on now?

Maybe it is because I was never the girl who was drawn to the dark, repressed, or dangerous boy. I like my guys stable and clean cut. But Lucien just failed to do it for me. It was also slow. A long read for a short book and while the pace picks up as we neared the conclusion, at the end of the day, not much happened. I'm kind of disappointed.

Bottom line, some people may enjoy it—especially fans of contemporary YA fiction—but not me, so I can't recommend it to my readers. ( )