Bully by Penelope Douglas

Source: Purchased
Genre: New Adult
Publisher: Intermix (Penguin)
Date Published: February 18, 2014
Number of Pages: 333

My name is Tate. He doesn't call me that, though. He would never refer to me so informally, if he referred to me at all. No, he'll barely even speak to me.

But he still won't leave me alone.

We were best friends once. Then he turned on me and made it his mission to ruin my life. I've been humiliated, shut out, and gossiped about all through high school. His pranks and rumors got more sadistic as time wore on, and I made myself sick trying to stay out of his way. I even went to France for a year, just to avoid him.

But I'm done hiding from him now, and there's no way in hell I'll allow him to ruin my senior year. He might not have changed, but I have. It's time to fight back.

I'm not going to let him bully me anymore. (from Goodreads)

I don't know why I thought this was New Adult, because it's not. I mean, I guess some of the content can be considered NC-17, but that's like, 2 pages. But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy this book, because I did.

This isn't your typical YA romance or New Adult. It took like half the book to work up to where these two could be in the same room together and there wasn't an insult hurled either way. And I LIKED that. While the romance kinda just, popped, it was halfway realistic in that. You kinda knew they had always loved each other, they just needed to have a chance. And then when they had a chance it was like a damn firecracker, it boomed quickly, and there wasn't any real fallout.

Tate and K.C.'s friendship was awesome. She reminds me of my best friend at that age, Katie, and while we are still really good friends it was like she appeared in a book. She was always pushing me to go out, to move on from pain. It was awesome to see a strong female best friend in a book.

I think I read this in a day, maybe a day and a half, and I couldn't put it down. Jared is the classic bad boy type, but I felt for him. While the story felt somewhat predictable, the ending was explosive, and slightly unnecessary. I liked it, but I found myself going "why is this happening? Why can't we just kiss and be done?" But it's all good. It made me like it slightly more, purely because of Jared's reaction to everything.