Irresistible by Liz Bankes

About the book

Irresistible is a New Adult novel by Liz Bankes. It was published by Piccadilly Press on 25^th April and the book is 224 pages long.

Synopsis (Taken from Goodreads.com)

When Mia gets a job in a posh health/country club during her gap year, she is strikes up a friendship with the laconic and funny Dan. Dan is also working in the club and keeps Mia amused. However, she soon finds herself drawn to the wealthy bad boy, Jamie. Jamie is the beautiful and privileged Cleo’s boyfriend. Mia knows that her relationship with Jamie is wrong, but there’s something so dangerously exciting about Jamie that she just can’t stop.

What I thought

So far, this is the only New Adult book I have read by a British author and I couldn’t wait to see the difference between this and American New Adult books.

Protagonist Mia has just finished her GCSEs and needs a job for the summer. She manages to score herself an interview at a really posh hotel nearby owned by a super rich family. When she somehow manages to get the job, she is well aware of Jamie, the son, after she sees him drinking and pressed up against a window with some girl. To begin with, I quite liked Mia. She had good reasons for wanting the job, she came across as a nice enough girl and had a great thing going with her best friend.

Soon after Mia starts work at the hotel, she hits it off with a boy working in the kitchen named Dan, who was sweet and lovely and nothing but nice. The two begin to have some kind of a relationship and it appears that things are going well between the two… until Jamie happens. This is where me liking Mia began to go downhill. Jamie has a reputation for being a bad boy and a bit of a heartbreaker, although he has a girlfriend. Cleo, his girlfriend, was a lovely character and was quick to befriend Mia and invite her into their circle. Then Mia stabs her in the back. Lovely.

Jamie is one of those boys who has money and seems to think he can do whatever he wants because of that and thinks he will get away with it. It is quite clear early on that he enjoys ruining other people’s lives and it is pretty much a sport to him. He’s arrogant and full of himself. To begin with, he just teases Mia a little and flirts with her but nothing else. However, when Cleo goes away on holiday, things escalate. Mia and Jamie begin to spend a lot of time together, with her sneaking out at night to see him – meaning she is also doing things behind Dan’s back.

As for the story, there is little more to Irresistible than the romance. I say romance but it really isn’t that at all. Nothing really happens in this book save for the constant lying of Mia to other people. Not only does she lie to Dan, she lies to her best friend and her family. Also, as Jamie is part of a family with a lot of money, quite a lot in this book comes across as superficial and shallow. Because of this, it was hard to like some of the characters even a little bit because they had little more to them than the money of their parents.

However, strangely I loved the ending of this book. Characters appear to have changed quite quickly and the tone of the book also changes. The things I hated about the rest of the book aren’t there at the end which makes this part feel like it was written by someone else completely. If there is going to be a sequel, considering how the book was left, I may read it and I may not. It won’t be a book I’d be dying to get my hands on.