2.5 Star
The question that 23-year old Amalia Hastings wants the answer to is: What happens to men when they move to Manhattan?
Life in the big city gives Amalia a ride she is not expecting. As she tries to find her way on the little island that never sleeps, she discovers she has a harder time navigating through life then she does the streets of Greenwich Village and finds herself truly lost in the complex world of men, graduate school, money, family, and friendship.
She thought she had everything she wanted – a new apartment in Manhattan, a first-rate education at NYU, a group of trusted friends and Nicholas, a boyfriend who she once believed was her soul-mate. But somehow, it isn’t enough.
Stumbling through her relationships, Amalia encounters Michael. An attractive classmate who quickly moves from being one of her close friends, to an inconsistent friend-with-benefits. After all, the only thing consistent about New York is its beauty.
After getting terribly lost searching for love in all the wrong places, Amalia finds herself torn between the possibility of a relationship, and an adventure she's been planning all along.
She eventually realizes that solely chasing love closes her off to all of the other good things life has to offer. Now she must decide – what is worth the chase?
Kaley - 2.5 Star
I really wanted to love Chase by Jill Knapp-Zitron. I was looking forward to the fact that the characters were in their twenties because that usually means I can identify with them and totally understand what they're going through. That was true in the case of Chase but there were too many issues with the way the book was written and the overall story for me to really like it.
I found this novel to be awkwardly written. The dialogue didn't always flow and there were odd word choices here and there. Sometimes things were told out of order and I didn't know why. It just added to the general confusion I felt because there was no reason to bop back and forth in time to relay an event or story. One example of the weird phrasing, etc. happened when at one point Amalia is talking about how she's avoiding Michael as well as talking to Nicholas and criticizing his choices and the way he's been acting. Then there's a page break and the next paragraph starts off "Okay, so back to me." (page 171) Um...weren't we already with her? It's not like we switched perspectives or were even talking about another character. I just found that really odd. I also had to wonder how the hell Amalia's BFF, Cassandra, could afford so many luxuries (including paying for a $300 dress for Amalia). She had just been promoted to production assistant (I think) from intern at a fashion magazine. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure someone in that position would be paid peanuts, no?
Amalia isn't a bad character but she seemed to contradict herself (based on descriptions the author gave) and I couldn't always understand her motives. She constantly mentions how she knows she's being dramatic but she didn't care. I think she should. She came off as a bit of a bitchy princess sometimes because she "couldn't help herself from being dramatic". She has a good core group of friends but there were actually so many of them I got confused and wondered if some of them could have been cut out of the story entirely.
At its core, Chase is a good story. A girl trying to find herself at twenty three is, to me, an interesting premise and an author can do so many things with that (which makes me wonder why so many New Adult books are almost identical but that's a story for another day). Unfortunately, Jill Knapp-Zitron's novel let me down. I think with some editing and reworking this can be a great novel but until then I have to give this one a so-so rating. The cover, however, gets top marks. I absolutely love it!
Thank you to Jill Knapp-Zitron for our review copy. All opinions are our own.
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