Review: Rocked Under by Cora Hawkes

Title: Rocked Under
Author: Cora Hawkes
Blurb:
Falling in love isn't always easy or pleasant. The intense and angst-filled story of Emma and Scott is a painful, gut-wrenching and exhausting portrayal of how hard it can be to let go...

Picking up the pieces and starting again in the US, Emma enrols in college with her cousin, Ashley. She is finally free to do what she wants and live how she chooses, and no man will ever rule her decisions or emotions again.

That is, until Scott Mason walks on stage...

Intense bad boy Scott is the lead singer of a popular local rock band. A ladies’ man and Ashley's long-time friend, Scott holds an instant fascination for Emma — she finds herself drawn to him, even though he represents everything she hates and needs to stay away from in a guy. He treats females like he does a cigarette — light it, use it, and lose it.

For her cousin's sake, Emma makes an effort to get along with Scott, but she soon discovers that there is more to him than first appears, making him even more dangerous in her eyes. Behind the façade of friendship, jealousy, obsession, fear and insecurity fester — an internal battle rages as she fights her attraction and does everything she can to stop history from repeating itself.

One thing she knows for sure is that if she breaks her rule, it may destroy her.

Links:
Rocked Under on Goodreads
 
 Kala's Review:
The big problem I had with Rocked Under is that the characters are so awful until the last couple of pages that they're nearly impossible to like.

SOME SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW!!

Our main character, Emma, is a Brit who recently transplanted to a college in the USA (can't even remember what school or even what state!). She is roommates with her American cousin, Ashley, and neighbors with the frontman of a local rock band (Scott) who happens to be good friends with Ashley.

The entire plot is Emma and Scott dancing around their attraction for each other in the most obnoxious ways possible. We spend most of the book reading about Emma being attracted to Scott, but refusing to act on it because 1) her parents have a fucked up relationship and 2) Ashley told her Scott is a player.

Emma spends a large amount of time drunk in nightclubs, allowing guys to kiss her and feel her up while Scott watches. Scott spends a large amount of time having almost public sex with girls while Emma watches. And while they're watching each other, they appropriately seethe with jealousy.

Scott also likes to punch people out and is constantly beating up guys that hit on Emma - he's probably worse about this than Travis (of Beautiful Disaster fame). I personally do not think it's romantic at ALL to have a guy (who is not even the girl's boyfriend) constantly yanking other guys off the dance floor and punching them out just because they danced/kissed the girl. I can't even count the number of guys that Scott punched. The only one who deserved it was the boyfriend, Adam, that Emma had for awhile.

Speaking of Adam, for 30% of the book, he is referred to as Adam. At around the 30% point, he suddenly becomes "Ad" which is just weird. Adam is not THAT long of a name and doesn't really need to be shortened!

Further on Adam... I just don't get this character. For a LONG time he is a sweet, nice guy, then after he takes Emma's virginity he suddenly turns in to a major prick? Like, the personality switch nearly gave me whiplash. It came out of nowhere and up until right before the virginity losing scene there were NO signs of it.

Back to Scott and Emma...

I don't know. These two were just a mess.

Scott does try to start things with Emma several times and she rejects him, over and over and over. Then she cries when he goes after other girls. If you're going to reject the guy, you don't really get ownership over him anymore! You don't get to say who he does and doesn't get to sleep with. You had your chance (or should I say CHANCES).

Ugh.

I just didn't like either of them, and when I can't stand the main characters I don't really care about rooting for their relationship to work out. I found myself just rooting for them to finally get it on so the book would be over so I could stop reading about Emma dancing at Soundz and acting skanky while Scott acts like a drugged out manwhore.

2 out of 5 stars.

Link to Kala's review on Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/540161589