How Not to Fall (The Belhaven Series) by Emily Foster – eARC Review

Publication Date:

June 28th, 2016

Publisher:

Kensington Books

Goodreads Synopsis:

In her witty and breathtakingly sexy novel, Emily Foster introduces a story of lust, friendship, and other unpredictable experiments. . .

Data, research, scientific formulae–Annabelle Coffey is completely at ease with all of them. Men, not so much. But that’s all going to change after she asks Dr. Charles Douglas, the postdoctoral fellow in her lab, to have sex with her. Charles is not only beautiful, he is also adorably awkward, British, brilliant, and nice. What are the odds he’d turn her down?

Very high, as it happens. Something to do with that whole student/teacher/ethics thing. But in a few weeks, Annie will graduate. As soon as she does, the unlikely friendship that’s developing between them can turn physical–just until Annie leaves for graduate school. Yet nothing could have prepared either Annie or Charles for chemistry like this, or for what happens when a simple exercise in mutual pleasure turns into something as exhilarating and infernally complicated as love.

Review:

*I was provided a copy by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Once again this was a buddy read with Cristina @ My Tiny Obsessions so click HERE to read her review :).

When I read this book I got really excited because it’s not every day that you see a new adult book where the main characters are studying some kind of scientific field. If you don’t know (which you probably don’t :P). I actually studied and have a MSc in a scientific field so this is something that interests me and that I like to read especially when the main character goes through something I went through. I totally understand Annie’s stress and lack of sleep and food while writing her final project. I went through the exact same things while writing my thesis. However this book wasn’t perfect for me and I had a few problems with it.

The book started out pretty well. I really liked the characters and the direction of the story. Annie and Charles’s chemistry was great (most of the times) and I like the “Thing” they had. I liked Annie. She was a funny character and I loved how she knew what she wanted to do in the future. I really liked her as a character. I also kind of liked Charles. In the beginning he was adorable but with the progress of the book we could see that not everything was fine with him and that he had some kind of secret so that left me with a few doubts about him. This could have been solved if the book had a dual POV but I can understand why this book was told only in Annie’s perspective. The thing is, this book will have a sequel and it doesn’t end in a great place and I think the use of only one POV helped in this book to keep some secrets. I’m happy that book 2 will be told in dual POV because I want to understand what’s going on Charles’s mind.

I was liking this book a lot until it got to a certain point that got weird. The thing is this book erotica. I had no idea. It wasn’t on NetGalley and it wasn’t on Goodreads when I was reading it (it is now). Things got weird at some points and sometimes it left me a little bit uncomfortable. I don’t have problem with sex in books at all. I read a lot of new adult books so I’ve read a lot of sex scenes in books but there was at least two in this book that left me uncomfortable and that made me not enjoy this book as much. It could have been different if I knew that this was erotica but I didn’t.

Overall, this was an enjoyable book. It had a few problems for me but I would still recommend it if you like these kind of books. One thing is for sure, I plan on reading the next book to see where it will take Annie and Charles next.

Rating:

Have you read this book? If so, what did you think about it? If you haven’t read it would you read it?