Review: Not Okay, Cupid by Heidi R. Kling
Title: Not Okay, Cupid
Author: Heidi R. Kling
Publisher: Entangled: Crush
Publish Date: January 11, 2016
Synopsis: Hazel McCallister loves her life. Perfect grades. Perfect best friend. Perfect boyfriend. Until her perfect boyfriend cheats on her with her perfect best friend. Now Hazel’s in free fall—until her best friend’s brother, Felix, gives her the perfect idea. Reclaim her power by taking revenge on her cheating ex.
Felix James loves his life. Casual relationships. Loads of surfing. He’s as drama-free as they come. But he can’t stand by when his sister steals her best friend’s boyfriend, and the dude insists it was Hazel’s fault. So Felix vows to help turn Hazel into a girl her ex can’t resist—so then she can break his heart.
With an alliance in place, Hazel’s revenge is all but assured. But with each piece of payback, she feels a stronger attraction to Felix, even though revenge will turn her into a girl Felix could never be with. And soon Hazel has to make an impossible choice: revenge...or Felix, the boy who’s stolen her heart.
WARNING! This book contains betrayal, revenge, and that most tempting vice of all, the bad boy you know you can't have.
Cover: The cover for Not Okay, Cupid isn’t anything special. I feel as if it would blend into other books on the shelf, and people wouldn’t be drawn to picking it up. It’s reminds me of a lot of your typical romance covers- hot shirtless guy with a girl. It’s not very eye-catching.
Characters: I’m only going to go to depth on Felix and maybe one other, but I wanted to make a general statement first. The characters were Perfect Polly’s in a way. Hazel is, like, totally perfect. She’s a vegetarian (or maybe it’s vegan) and she does all of these community service projects. She has the “perfect” boyfriend/life until her boyfriend cheats on her. People want to be her. She’s this goody-two shoes and the bad boy wants her. It just didn’t appeal to me, and really turned me off on the characters. It said that they had faults, but those faults weren’t shown. Sometimes it would be like, “Oh yeah, I saved the ocean in our little beach town from blah blah blah.” That might’ve not happened, it’s just an example.
Oh, and she just magically knows how to surf except no one knows about it. And Felix is the best surfer in town.
Felix was actually a pretty good character. He was the “Player of La Playa,” which is stated multiple times. But you never see the player side of him. He’s always sweet and crushing on Hazel. I liked how he was really good at cooking. Very unexpected and original.
Plot: The plot was okay. It wasn’t exactly original, and I can think of quite a few books about getting revenge on a ex. There were plenty of swoon-worthy parts. Some things were so sweet!
One thing that I noticed that there wasn’t a lot of varying vocab. That may sound silly, but I thought the same words/phrases were repeated over and over. “I digress” was one of the things I noticed. When I first saw it, I was like that’s a kind of cool statement, something you don’t see a lot of. Yet, it was repeated over and over. I got sick of it by the end of the book.
Ending: Nothing fantastic although I was cheering. It was very *swoon-y* and nice.
Overall: It was a quick read. Some characters were blah, but Felix was amazing. I just remembered something that confused me. There was a part mentioned where Felix had brown eyes, and then he had green, and then they went back to brown. I don’t know if that was a typo or can chocolate brown eyes turn green? It was just something that stuck out to me. I think Not Okay, Cupid would be a nice read for Valentine’s Day.
About the Author
Heidi R. Kling writes about normal girls in fantastic situations. PAINT MY BODY RED, a romantic thriller about a girl fleeing secrets from home launches November 2 with EntangledTeen, followed by several more novels on various Entangled imprints. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the New School, but has been writing books, plays and screenplays since she could practically hold a pencil.
Her first novel, SEA (Putnam), was a Gateway Readers Award Finalist & Northern California Book of the Year nominee, was a Summer 2010 Indie Next Pick and a Goodreads "Mover and Shaker".
Writing Literature from UC Santa Cruz and finding her voice in YA, Heidi went on to earn her MFA in Writing for Children from The New School. She has directed and written children's theatre on both coasts and lives with her husband and two children in Palo Alto, CA.
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