I really enjoyed this book, it had me gripped, was exciting and wondered what might happen next with a shocking ending I didn't see coming.
Was nice to read something a little different and I really took the character Nate until he started to change.

Writing 1-star reviews is the thing I dread most. I have been postponing it, but I do believe every book deserves to get a review, even if I didn't like it. This book... It started out okay, the conversations felt a bit forced but I wanted to give it a try. I didn't really like it, but the book was "only" 195 pages so why not finish it? It became a WTF book very fast for me, I couldn't read it anymore and I tell you why.

Pros
Creepy: The book is listed as a Horror book and I can agree on that. The few parts that were supposed to be the horror parts, were actually pretty creepy. It felt a bit like some of those Japanese Horror movies/games.

Cons
Annoying characters: The characters don't feel real, at all. This girl that Nathaniel likes and goes out with has a bit of a screaming relationship with her boyfriend and the boyfriend wants to kill Nathaniel for a dirty toilet in a restaurant...? The random screaming, crying and Nathaniel's sister calling him BRO every few sentences. Nope.
Behavior: Some things the characters did felt very out of place. Imagine: You just met some people at your new school. You become VERY GOOD friends (within a day) and then that one person decides to throw your sister a surprise party, since you've been such good friends for a day already...... The book is filled with strange things like this.
Conversations: Like I said at the beginning of my review, the conversations felt forced, weird and not natural at all, I couldn't stand to read it.
Random BJ's: OKAY this totally weirded me out. This girl that likes Nathaniel and they have like spoken for 3 minutes and then she decides to give him a random BJ in a CAR. Nope, thanks.

Overall
I don't mean to disrespect anybody but this book feels so weird. I didn't understand the story, the characters, the plot... It didn't make sense at all, it didn't feel natural it felt forced and I just don't know? I don't want to discourage anybody, especially a new author, but I couldn't force myself to finish this book. So sorry.

This was not for me, I’m afraid. The email Net Galley sent out about it really intrigued me, so I wanted to try it, but the writing style really jarred with me and I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t manage to finish it, in all honesty, and so will not post this review elsewhere.

This read made absolutely no sense to me. I read the entire novel because there were aspects of it that kept me interested, but you lost me. I have no idea what this book is about. I know it is supposed to be part of a trilogy, but man, something should have been explained that would keep my interest in the follow-up novels.

I am really sorry I can't appreciate the story. It was like "huh!? how did that happened??" the whole time.

I did not get the humor.. at least a little horror at the beginning....

I love the cover for this book. I was really pulled in and intrigued. Sadly, the book didn't live up to the cover.
Nathaniel starts college after being an outcast. After falling asleep in class, he realizes that girls actually like him. But this magic is also dangerous.
I love absurd comedy like Christopher Moore, but this book is just absurd without being funny. Nothing makes any sense and the story is never pulled together. I don't even know why anything happened. There was some great potential here but characters were flat and often didn't really add to the plot. The story seems to ramble, but it had been tightened and a true mythology added, this could have been a good story.

Sadly not a book for me. I struggled to get into it and only managed to get just over 1/2 way through.

I won’t post reviews anywhere else as I don’t like to be negative about author’s works. Not a book for me; I find it very difficult to read poorly edited work..

First of all, I'd like to thank NetGalley and the author for a free copy of this book in change of an honest review.
So, I'll be honest.
I truly think that the plot itself has something interesting. But.
1) For at least the first twelve chapters I thought it was awful, with no doubt and no possibility of getting better, and this is not a minor flaw, since this part represents 60% of the total amount of pages. Basically more than half the book is an unreadable turmoil. The author here should have refined his work, maybe with some help from a good editor: it is poorly written, and while I was reading I felt like some sentences didn't fit, like they weren't 100% grammatically correct. (Could it be that the author's mother language isn't English?)
2) The narration is a big mess, many parts just don't make sense - starting from the dialogues with the sister, who seems to have no plans of life, no duties during her day a part from suggesting her brother how to act, how to talk, how to dress,... I couldn't really empathize with the occurrences. Expecially after Nathaniel dates Tonya, it goes worse, and truly becomes horrible until he meets Heart. The only OK parts are those about Nathaniel's nightmares, the horror scenes. Excluding those ones, there's only vomit and feces all over - literally.
3) Unfortunately, while the events grow more interesting, the characters never get better over the 145 pages. They're all typical figures you can find in every YA novel: everybody seems indestructible, flat, in one word: unrealistic - even Nathaniel, who is a total loser, an underdog, incredibly hapless. Even if it's a sort of "paranormal" work, that doesn't convince. Add their language, their repeated use of the same words: many people in this book are particularly irritating. For example, I couldn't stand Kim at all. Were I the editor, I would have tried to find a way to soon get rid of her.
Characters are fundamental in a book, and if you can't fancy anyone, at the end you can't really appreciate the other features that compose a literary work.

That said, I think many people who stopped reading the book would have better enjoyed the second part, as I did, because if you can overcome the bad chapters the last 50 pages are quite a good work, although it's impossible to forget the previous ones. I have to admit that if I weren't born with a stubborn nature, after the third - of a hundred - vomit chrysis I wouldn't have gone ahead either.
In conclusion, the idea isn't bad, and also has something original, but the execution left a bit to desire.

Nathaniel was always downtrodden and considered a loser. When he had the opportunity for powers, he leapt at the chance.

This was billed as a horror book, but I didn't really see that element in it at all. The writing is uneven and some of the dialogue was clunky at times. Initially I felt bad for Nathaniel and his sister Kim, but we went through one unbelievable plot point to the next, and it never felt as though there was a point to it. The further along in the story we went, the less and less sympathy I felt for Nathaniel. In addition, some of the characters that we're introduced to and sympathize with are just as easily discarded. I was upset that Tonya, outed as transgender, disappears and then is found dead. Hardly anyone cares about that, and it plays into the trope of killing off the Other characters.

Overall, the execution of this book was such a let down.

I have to be totally honest, this book was not good. I did not finish it. The premise sounded good, I love to read YA novels, but the writing for me was not great.

Even for a YA book this felt incredibly juvenile and a bit all over the place. There were so many events happening all at once, with not one pause of breath when jumping from one ridiculous story to another. It felt like the book was written in one big rush.

I couldn't connect with any of the characters, let alone enjoy them. I'm still struggling to understand what the plot actually was. I left this book at 43% in as I just couldn't spend anymore time reading something I had no love for. But I tried hard to get into it, I just couldn't.

I would like to thank Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Very interesting story and I wasn't expecting it to end the way it did.
This book was entertaining and different, which I liked.

On the cover we see women's hands holding a sort of jewel in the shape of a heart.

The story tells of the relationship between Nathaniel and his sister who are very close to each other. He is put aside wherever he goes by the girls. He has no friends. Until the day he receives a sort of miraculous gift and it will allow him to attract the girl he has always dreamed of except that it will not go as planned. He will realize that it is a poisoned gift.

I loved the script, the characters. The end is full of suspense, I did not expect that. I thank Netgalley for advising me on this book.

I’m not really sure what I can say about this book. It had a few funny parts but most of it was slightly ridiculous and over the top. I felt like the plot and characters were all over the place and I’m still not sure I fully understand what was happening. It was very choppy and unrealistic. The description left with me a different impression of what type of book this was. I hate to take away from an authors work but for me, it just wasn’t working. It felt kind of childish.
* I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review *

This is fast-paced with many a dark wist and turn, following the adventures, or rather misadventures of class misfit Nathaniel as he begins to.experience strange visions in between starting to meet and date girls for the first time.

It was not really to my taste however. The dark humour, if this is what it is, do not a sympathetic protagonist create - the details of his ejaculation in his pants as he chats up a classmate rather are a turnoff if the 'too much information' kind. Similarly, the writer seems to keen to remind the reader that his new gym trainer friend has an erection pointing at his neck as he lifts weight and is not shy about pointing this out. A stripper he meets at a club, who is about to help him lose his virginity, turns out to be his mother. And so on.

There might be some who would relish all this as good, gamey humour, but those of a more.pastoral persuasion might be less-than happy of.they thought their teen offspring were sniggering their way through this series of unedifying virgin dating.

Nah. This is just nasty.

Nathaniel starts to get into more and more trouble as a mysterious hallucination with heart-shaped eyes leads him into acts of violence and eventually a stay on hospital where he bites flesh out of a nurse and his irises go red. If Nathaniel is set to become a new Superman, it would seem to be a rather devilish one, but at least he starts.to dress cool.and look that part.

It ends with what looks like his suicide, though it might just be a cliffhanger, but I think I will leave any sequels for those whose tastes are probably.somewhat removed from mine.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review. #mildspoilersahead

Where do I begin? I feel like I was almost duped into reading this book. I received an email from "NetGalley Recommends" that was filled with absolutely glowing reviews for this book, and the brief description seemed interesting. So I figured, let me give it a shot. Wow... what a different book I ended up with.

I realized shortly after getting into the book that something was amiss, and going online to find a litany of other people's 1 and 2-star reviews made me realize I was not alone in this rationale. The book, despite having what feels like good intentions, is genuinely a train wreck. And I mean this in the same way that you feel watching "The Room"; that it's a hot mess, but yet you can't look away. And this is really my biggest critique and praise at the same time. That being, that I actually read through the entire book despite it's (many) shortcomings because after a time where you're waiting for it to pick up and get better, you eventually find yourself more drawn to seeing how bad it can ultimately get.

While some sections are nicely penned, overall the book is not well written. It flows almost like the author sat down one day, decided to write a book, and just started with some ideas, but no clear story or plan in mind. Characters come and go without much depth. Crazy things happen with barely a reaction from the characters or world around them. There's no real consistency or growth in any of the characters. And what I would consider to be the real start of the story we're promised in the description, doesn't happen until about 85% of the way through the book (according to my kindle). And at that, his supposed "gift" which the book's description says is, "...a miraculous gift that allows him to attract the girl of his dreams..." never even happens. The girl we're led to believe is the girl of his dreams wants nothing to do with him outside of being friends at any point in the book. In fact he never gets together with any girl before the end unless they were deliberately using him. So what the heck description?

The main character is quite possibly the dumbest, most naive, and disconnected from reality person that has ever been put to the page, both before and after his "change". Add in his irritating sister, who (extremely annoyingly) endlessly calls him "Bro" until you wish she had a bigger vocabulary or could at least remember his actual name. And then finally tack on the supporting characters who all pop in and out of the story willy-nilly and are all one-dimensional, broken record, cardboard set pieces for the main character to interact with (the jocky one, the funny one, the hot one, the forgettable one {whom I've forgotten}).

Take for example Tonya, a girl that sits behind Nathaniel in class. She shows some interest in him, which makes him ejaculate in his pants while walking with her because he realizes she has breasts, so she introduces him to her boyfriend (?), who then outs her to be a trans-woman, who then gets killed by said boyfriend because he's jealous and presumably because he had to clean a bathroom that was totally covered in feces for no discernible reason. Nathaniel feels bad for a hot minute for not doing anything, and then neither of them get mentioned again. This is the type of crazy off-the-rails writing that goes on throughout this book. By the end, the main character is directly and indirectly connected to umpteen murders and hospital visits, including a massacre at a strip club, and there is no police presence questioning why this is.

There's really a million frustrating things I could dive into. Not the least of which is the random cop out ending that felt like even the author didn't know where to go with it and should put it out to pasture before spending any more of their own time writing it. I think it boils down to this was probably a first time out of the gate try by the author that suffered from inexperience in writing, and lack of a cohesive plan going into it. Lines such as, "The semi-truck inches closer and closer to us at full speed." show this inexperience, and probably the lack of an editor to help patch it up. Although the whole thing comes off like an early first draft that got pushed to publishing before it was ready. Until the author takes another pass and cleans it up, I can't recommend it.

With all that said, I wish the author would take another stab at it. Because at its core, I think there's some good ideas and a book I'd like to read buried in the mire.

Thanks for the advanced copy, I’m really sorry but I didn’t like this at all. I won’t share this review as I don’t like to leave bad reviews on something someone has worked hard on. The writing style is not good, it feels like it’s a story my 12 year old has written but with random sexual references. Also not one of the characters were likeable or even interesting. I finished it because I felt I wanted to give it a fair chance.

Netgalley had a way of making this book sound so interesting in theory but in all honesty I couldn't read past the 4th chapter. Since I was unable i can't say much about the plot line, characters or overall theme of the story but none of that matters because the writing is terrible... like painfully awkward to read, terrible.
It reads as if it was written by a sociallly inept teenage boy who's never talked to a girl in his life. Dialogue between characters seemed really unnatural and forced like someone was writing a spoof but its sad because they were being dead serious. It was so unbearably uncomfortable.
Do yourself a favor and don't even try to read this, its too cringeworthy and painful. I'm not trying to be mean and I'd feel terrible if the author read this but at the same time I need to be honest and save my fellow book lovers some time.
There is no structure or flow or effort put into this book. Every sentence is an action of what the character is doing or thinking, there is no descriptive language, no explanations of motive no substance--NOTHING. Its just " I thought this, then I did that, then she said this, then i walked here, then....so on and so forth.

If you don't want to heed my warning and are still up for trying to read this disaster for yourself, good luck and have fun cringing with every sentence.
You've been warned!

I didn't get on with this book at all, for all the same reasons as given by other NetGalley reviewers. Sorry.

I encourage this author to keep writing! I hate to bash any book, but this just didn't have the maturity, substance, or the storyline to keep me engaged. The writing was juvenile at best. However, I love the cover of the book!