Just Friends by Monica Murphy ~ Review (@MsMonicaMurphy,@jennw23)

Just Friends takes me back to High School... all that teenage drama! This book was a lot of fun, but I am on edge waiting for more!

Title: Just Friends

Author: Monica Murphy
Series: Friends #1

Genre: Mature YA Romance

Published: September 13th 2016

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It’s the end of summer. Just before I start senior year with my two best friends in the whole world. Dustin and Emily are everything to me. We’ve been inseparable since middle school, and when we’re together, nothing can go wrong.

But things aren’t always what they seem. Em’s turned into a drunken mess who parties too much. Dustin and I have hooked up a few times—and now he’s ready to take our relationship to the next level. Yet I’m not sure I want things to change. I’m scared if I take it any further with Dustin, our friendship will be ruined forever. Then there’s Ryan. The new guy. He’s hot. He flirts way too much. And Em has totally set her sights on him.

So when my best friend betrays me in the worst possible way, guess who’s there to help me pick up the pieces of my broken heart? Ryan. But he’s so confusing. Annoying. Sweet. Sexy. I want to trust him, yet he makes it so hard. What I really want is for everything to go back to the way it was before.

Before I found out that best friends make the worst kind of enemies.

Just Friends is exactly what I expected from a group of teenagers, all around 17/18 years of age, with their raging hormones and their curiosity about the opposite sex. Heading into their senior year of high school, some of these teens wanted to be more popular, having parties and inviting boys, and were willing to push the boundaries when it came to sex. There was a lot of flirting, sexual innuendos but also backstabbing. Altogether, it was an interesting story, but one that isn't finished yet!

Olivia, Dustin and Em had been inseparable for years. But after Olivia spent the summer with her father, she returned home her two best friends that were acting a little differently. Em was hosting parties at home and becoming part of the popular crew. Dustin was still there, but seemed a little distant until he was after something more. When she discovered what happened she was all alone, and soon began a new friendship and even finds chemistry with the new boy in town.

I was all conflicted about the characters I met in this book! It's told from Olivia's perspective, and most of the time I liked her and it was sad to see what she was going through, but she would make some poor decisions at times and I wanted to shake her. Dustin seemed like a good guy, but he was a jerk occasionally. Em seemed a little flighty and maybe a bit fake. Ryan seemed to have two personalities; he was all flirty and sweet one moment, and then all distant and cold the next. There are other characters too, one seems genuine, and another I thought I was beginning to like, but was unsure by the end of the book.

I was really getting into the story when – BAM! End of book! I was not prepared for that at all, although I should expect that of Monica Murphy... she's done it to me before! * Wink * I enjoyed getting to see the characters through Olivia's eyes, going through all the teenage drama and I felt that Just Friends was a realistic portrayal of being a teenager. I know I have to get the next book, because I need to know who is real, what relationships will survive, and which ones don't!

Complimentary copy provided by the Author in exchange for an honest review.

Monica Murphy is the New York Times, USA Today and #1 international bestselling author of the One Week Girlfriend series, the Billionaire Bachelors and The Rules series. Her books have been translated in almost a dozen languages and has sold over one million copies worldwide. She is both self-published and published by Random House/Bantam and Harper Collins/Avon. She writes new adult, young adult and contemporary romance.

She is a wife and a mother of three who lives in central California on fourteen acres in the middle of nowhere along with their one dog and too many cats. A self-confessed workaholic, when she's not writing, she's reading or hanging out with her husband and kids. She's a firm believer in happy endings, though she will admit to putting her characters through angst-filled moments before they finally get that hard won HEA.

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