16 April 2013

Book Review: The Secret of Ella and Micha by Jessica Sorensen

"The girl he thinks he loves needs to disappear. I don't want tonight to be irreversible, so I pull away, breathing him in one last time.

Ella and Micha have been best friends since childhood, until one tragic night shatters their relationship and Ella decides to leave everything behind to start a new life at college, including Micha.

But now it's summer break and she has nowhere else to go but home. Ella fears everything she worked so hard to bury might resurface, especially with Micha living right next door. Micha is sexy, smart, confident, and can get under Ella's skin like no one else can. He knows everything about her, including her darkest secrets. And he's determined to win back the girl he lost, no matter what it takes."

Rating: 5/5

You can buy The Secret of Ella and Micha as a paperback or an eBook now.

I was sent a review copy of this new eBook sensation quite a few weeks ago now, but for some reason it didn't jump out at me and I wasn't sure it was my sort of thing. However, I kept reading things on Twitter about it, and in the end, curiosity got the better of me and I decided one night to start Jessica Sorensen's book. Sorensen has published many books under many different series, but this is the first of her books to be picked up by a British publisher (Little, Brown), and it's part of the 'New Adult' genre that is certainly becoming all the age at the moment. It seems quite a few authors who went down the self-publishing route are getting a big break, and now I've read The Secret of Ella and Micha, I can see why Sorensen is a New York Times bestselling author.

This is basically a love story. Ella and Micha have been best friends for years, but as they have grown, so have their feelings for each other. Ella is haunted by her past, and by what her mother has done, and a few months ago had a bad night with Micha and she ran away to Vegas, where she went to college, but she didn't tell anyone, especially Micha, where she had gone. Now it's summer and she has to return, knowing she will bump into Micha once more, but she doesn't want to reveal the old Ella as she's done such a good job of reinventing herself for the Vegas crowd. But as she's forced to spend more time with Micha when she gets home, feelings start to become stirred once more, and he's determined to get her to realise her feelings for him, and make her love him as he loves her. Will Micha be able to win back his beloved Ella for good?

The book's prologue hooks you in straight away - you are left wondering what on earth is going on to make Ella act in such a way, and you can also feel Micha's love for her. After that short prologue, the book suddenly jumps 8 months into the present day where we pick up the story and stay with it for the rest of the book. The book is told through two first person narratives, Ella's and then Micha's, and it continues this way up until the end, and I really enjoyed this. It allowed me to get really into the story of both of these people, and we're given different perspectives of what happens as well. Despite Ella's initial hesitance at getting close to Micha, you can tell she has deep feelings for him however she might appear, and I was left just waiting for her to finally give in to Micha and to her feelings. Ella was quite a closed book, and things are slowly revealed about her past which allow us to make sense of why she's such a introverted person and wanting to hide who she used to be.

Micha is a fabulous male lead, and he's everything you want to read about in a hot male lead! He sounds rather attractive, with his pierced lip, he's a musician (of course), and likes to drive cars - fast. He is deeply in love with Ella and wants her more than anything, and is hating the fact she is turning him down. Yes, he's a bad boy but he's so much more than that too, and Ella really brings out a different side of him. Micha has a bit of a back story with his family too, and I felt more sympathetic to him as the book went on. I especially liked his scenes when he's driving his fast cars - Sorensen writes the action and the excitement so well that you feel like you're in there with them, feeling the adrenaline pumping as Ella does. Sorensen writes the sexual tension  between Ella and Micha so well, you can really feel it as you're reading, and I was left wanting them just to get on with it because you can see how much they want each other, no matter how much Ella might try and deny it, and Micha's way of wooing her is pretty great lol, however did she resist?!

I was only around a 1/4 of the way through the book when I began reading it Sunday night, and I ended up staying awake until gone 2am to finish it, because I became so absorbed with their story that I couldn't put it down. I loved everything about this story, from the way Sorensen builds up the tension and the story between Ella and Micha, and also how she weaves in their pasts, especially Ella's to fully round off their tales. I liked the inclusion of Ella's college roommate Lila who is there to show us how different the Ella of now is compared to the one she was pretending to be at college, and I loved her shocked reactions to some of the things Ella does. It's a real love story that will draw you in and have you turning the pages until you reach the final one because you're desperately craving a happy ending for Ella and Micha. I'm thrilled to see that there is another book with Ella and Micha coming later this summer, and I can't wait to catch up with these two once again. Jessica Sorensen took me by complete surprise with this book, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Now where can I find me my own Micha?!

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