Customer Reviews

LoveSick

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's official- Jake Coburn is my favorite author. After reading his first novel, Prep, I eagerly waited for the arrival of his second book. Well, LoveSick did not let me down. I think it even surpassed Prep in awsomeness! A true love story that will appeal to both boys and girls, LoveSick tells the tale of two troubled college freshmen brought together by extraordinary circumstances. I really grew to care about the main characters; and some of the side characters, particularly Michael, are really terrific. Bravo, Mr. Coburn, Bravo... you are a real winner!

Jake Coburn starts LOVESICK with a teaser: he writes as if the characters told him their real story. Certainly the story of two addicts trying to survive in college could be true, but it is unique in that Ted is hired by Erica's father to watch her at college. She has bulimia and her super-rich dad wants to be sure she is healthy in her dorm. Ted has his own demons to face in that he is a former basketball star whose scholarship was yanked after a drunk driving accident left him with a metal knee. The "scholarship" from Erica's father seems like a second chance.

As he watches Erica between AA meetings, Ted finds himself drawn to her. They begin running into each other at night when they can't sleep. Soon he starts trusting her with his issues and he wants her to trust him, but ultimately he knows that his secret will divide them if she ever finds out.

In the meantime, Michael, an employee of Erica's father, keeps very close tabs on both Ted and Erica by reading their email and checking their phone and ATM records. The more Ted gets to know her, the more he keeps their friendship from Michael and Erica's father. But it is only a matter of time before all is known --- to everyone.

Slow but intense, LOVESICK follows the daily story of two people's struggles to trust others --- and themselves --- as they recover from their addictions.

--- Reviewed by Amy Alessio

jake coburn's new book lovesick was an original story. i love the way he takes an idea or situation and brings it to our attention when we would have never thought about it in the first place. as in his first novel prep which i absolutely fell in love with. you kind of see them as underground, hidden stories that most look past. Lovesick was very interesting and i think coburn did an excellent job at telling their story. as a young reader i have many friends that have addictions to purging, and drinking and i could relate to the characters and the struggles they went through throughout the book. one thing i didnt like and kept me from rating it 5 stars is the overusage of the word F*ck. it seemed to be on every page. it sometimes took away from the sincerity of the character i.e. when ted was trying to apologize to erica. it doesnt seem heartfelt when hes using that word starting everyother sentence. also in the beginning, i didnt understand charles. hes this big time guy, yet in his meeting with ted, he acted really immature in his actions and the way he spoke. i thought the dialog could have reflected the character's personality a bit more. but overall i really enjoyed the book and once you get to the end, you are rushing to finish the book. nice ending also.

Love Sick was a very shocking, interesting, and caring book. It showed how someone can not be trusted but loved at the same time. It also showed how someone will do anything to stop their dream or life for love.
Love Sick was a page turner. I never wanted to put it down. And I was always wondering what fantastic thrill would happen next.
I would most defiantly give this book a ten and five star! It was truly that good! I loved it, and I would recommend Love Sick to anyone who loves a little bit of romance, college living, and a brilliant plot.

Lovesick is a uniquely candid look at the life of two college freshman. The story is surprisingly easy to relate to belying the extraordinary circumstances the heroes find themselves immersed in. Portions of the story are told through emails that the characters have supposedly sent back and forth revealing fascinating levels of complexity in their personalities. I found myself eagerly awaiting the next volley of emails or meetings with the psychiatrist via instant message. You won't be able to put this book down as it takes you from an east coast Ivy League campus to a New York City climax that will leave you reeling. I loved every second of it and can't wait for Coburn's next!

Lovesick is one of those compelling, can't-put-it-down emotional rollercoasters that sneak up on me every now and again. This one was given to me by a friend, so I have to admit that I wasn't even looking for something like this. I'm more the car chase, shoot `em up kind of guy, as anyone that reads this blog knows. I don't like to do a lot of deep thinking. After all, I have five kids and I do that enough, thank you very much.

But Jake Coburn hooked me with his lead Ted York. I've known guys like Ted, who had their lives mainlined into their athletic abilities. And some of them, like Ted, ended up flat on their butts when the athletic life they'd envisioned didn't pan out for one reason or another. Those lives tend to be very short.

A lot of people don't dream past that career, though. For Ted, the athletic scholarship was a means to an end, a way to get out of the blue collar existence his parents had brought him up in and sacrificed to get him above. Even though his world had crashed around him, literally, and his knee was gone for good, and he was attending AA meetings to keep from drinking, he wants that dream he was reaching for through basketball.

I started rooting for the guy from page one.

I rooted for Erica too, but it took me longer to warm up to her because I really didn't get her illness or how it could impact her life so hard. Alcoholism is much easier for me to understand because I've seen people that suffer through it, but bulimia is relatively unknown to me except through reading and television.

The love story that unfolds in the pages is well done, maybe a little sappy and shopworn at times, but it's effective. I sat down to read a little of this book so I could discuss it with my friend, but ended up reading it practically cover to cover. Was I surprised by the twists and turns of the plot? Nope, can't say that I was.

However, what lifts this book up is Coburn's writing. Some people might find his use of email missives somewhat annoying, but I loved them. The characters of the father and the agent that negotiates Ted's scholarship are starkly revealed and play important parts in the story. And they don't really have to be on stage most of the time.

Coburn has only written one other book so far, and I'm going to track it down. Although this is published under the Speak imprint and is written on a more "adult" interest level, if you're easily offended by harsh language, I'd like to caution you that the characters speak very frankly.

Ted York's life looked perfect. One of the better high school basketball players in the country, he has been offered full tuition at an Ivy League school by an anonymous alumnus. What no one knows is that Ted is an alcoholic. A few months before he's due to start college, Ted destroys his knee in a drunk driving accident. Suddenly, that's it - basketball career over, college career over, life over.

Erica Praker is smart enough to get into any college, but her father is one of the richest men in New York, which means she would get in even if she were dirt dumb. Erica is also fighting personal demons, bulimia first and foremost. Her father doesn't want her to go away to college, but Erica is determined to leave home.

After his accident, Ted is attending AA meetings and working at the local mall. College seems impossible until a man who works for Erica's father makes Ted a proposition. Keep an eye on Erica at school for one year, send regular e-mail reports and Mr. Praker will pay for all four years of Ted's college education. It seems like the perfect set-up, but when Ted meets Erica and starts getting to know her, he realizes that she's the last person in the world he wants to betray.

AWESOME!!!!!~~This book was fantastic not only in pure realness, but in non sugar coated love story fashion. i cant beleive i almost enojoyed this as much as Jakes first book, Prep. This book was unbeleivably good, and shows you the reality of many situations you might never have seen before. i reccomend this book to anyone who can appreciate literary geniuus, love, healing, or a freshman year of college. GREAT BOOK READ TODAY!!!!

I bought this book because if focuses on addiction and particularly eating disorders. I like that this book explores the 12 step premise for both OA and AA.

I liked the characters although I was not overly fond of Erika and her weird, weird thinking (although I can see the relationship between her thinking and her illness) - still some of it was a bit much.

What I did not like and thought was very, very weird was the basic storyline. Just not believable in anyway and fell very flat. I am sure the author could have come up with a better introduction for these two people.

Finished the book in two days and felt cheated somehow. Of course, the ending is also a little too pat.

While there are things I liked and things I didn't like about this book, one thing's for sure: LoveSick is definitely different - different from anything I've read before, and different from what I'd expected. The first thing that surprised me is that this novel is based on a true story. In the beginning, the author talks about how he'd heard about Erica's and Ted's story actually happening and how he'd decided to turn it inot a novel, which is crazy - the idea for LoveSick is just so unlikely, something that only happens in books and movies. (Actually, I didn't find that out only once I read the book, mfay2 had already mentioned that in her review, but I'd forgotten and still think it's an interesting fact.)

What makes this book so different is the super-descriptive writing. Everything is described down to the smallest detail, especially Erica's bulimia. The reader gets to know every step of what she does in meticulous detail - choosing a store to buy the food, choosing what food to buy, buying the food, calculating the calories, organizing the food, choosing a toilet, cleaning that toilet, setting a timer, and so on. I know, this sounds so weird, but it's actually really interesting - that's a way of looking at bulimia I'd never thought about before. For some reason, this style works - it's blunt and crude but somehow fascinating. Even the back of the cover is that blunt. On the back of the book there's a picture of - I'm not even kidding - a toilet. I know, it's weird and disgusting... but for some reason, I love it.

I also loved that this book takes place in college. Why are there so few YA books about college students? As a high school senior, reading about college life would be really interesting to me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. So I was really happy to see this book deals with college life.

Another thing that makes this book unique are the e-mails and chatroom discussions in between the different passages. At first, I didn't get the point of those e-mails, and found them kind of boring, but later on, I loved them. I especially liked reading the sessions Erica has with her therapist. The two play chess online for Erica's sessions and talk about, well, everything. There's just something about those conversations - they're so real, and I just loved them.

While I really liked some aspects of LoveSick, there are things I disliked, too. The plot is only okay, in my opinion - it's very predictable, and only at the end did it get really exciting. I found the characters to be somewhat underdeveloped - for the most part, Ted is defined by being alcoholic and Erica by being bulimic, and we don't know that much more about them. Despite reading from both of their perspectives, I didn't feel like I knew them all that well. The fact that they're defined by alcoholism/bulimia and don't have many other characteristics made it hard for me to relate or connect to either one of the characters. And the secondary characters... well, there are no real secondary characters, except for Erica's father and Charles, the ones who 'hire' Ted. I would have liked to know a little more about some of the other college students, and I found it somewhat unrealistic how Ted and Erica almost only spent time with one another and didn't get to know many other people. That being said, I did love Ted and Erica's relationship - the way they talk to and treat each other made me smile.

Despite those negative aspects, I do recommend LoveSick if you're in the mood for something different and unique. While I don't think the descriptive and blunt style will work for everyone, it definitely worked for me!