Unlovable (The Port Fare Series) [Kindle Edition]

Sherry Gammon (Author), Camelia Miron Skiba (Editor), Cindy C. Bennett (Editor)

Book Description

Soon to made into a movie!
Click the author graph square and have your ecopy signed!

UNLOVABLE
Seventeen year-old Maggie Brown is truly the poster child for Heroin Chic, complete with jutting bones and dark-ringed eyes. But drugs are not Maggie's problem... her mother is.
Maggie’s struggling with her growing feelings for the new guy at school, Seth Prescott, and fears he is just another person who will let her down, like everyone in her life has done thus far.
Seth Prescott is an undercover cop assigned to Port Fare High, and despite his job, he’s developed strong feelings for Maggie.
Seth’s working tirelessly to flush out the sadistic drug peddlers that have invaded the small town of Port Fare, New York, while Maggie fights to stay alive as the search turns deadly. Seth and Maggie’s romantic journey is one of humor, heartbreak and self-discovery as their world is about to change forever.

Unlovable was Sherry's debut novel and quickly rose to many top seller lists on Amazon. She is pleased to announce that Unlovable is currently being made into a movie. She has added two more novels to her body of work. Souls in Peril, the poignant story of Max Sanchez who is on a journey to help the struggling JD Miller survive high school, and Pete & Tink, a fun, light-hearted novella of a manga-loving geek and and five-and-a-half inch fairy.

Sherry and her husband, along with their children and a couple of crazy dogs, call Upstate New York home. It is where she spends her nights writing instead of sleeping.

Unlovable Video Book Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGsz1q_DYZM

Editorial Reviews

Review

~ Bittersweet-Enchantment.com

Wow, wow, wow, this book is the whole package of greatness! Unlovable went above and beyond. I found this book to just tear at my heart string. There is such wonderful passion and love within this story. I love it when I can come across a book that just makes me feel good while reading it. The author, Sherry Gammon, has written a timeless love story.

~Tough Critic Book Reviews.blogspot.com

It's next to impossible to find the words to express what a phenomenal book this was. First off, I can't believe this was a debut novel. It was so beautifully written. The author was able to realistically portray a story of abuse, love, co-dependency, romance, and triumph in a way that is far beyond most books I've read.

~Ya-aholic.com 

This book was ...WOW, just amazing. It is so beautiful, I could not believe how good this story was. It blew my mind! I started reading this one night and couldn't stop. I had to stay up until I finished the whole thing, and once it ended all I wanted was for it to continue! I wanted no, NEEDED, more of Maggie and Seth! Their romance is one of the best I have read ever! Unlovable was truly an amazing story; it had everything, romance, action, mystery, thrill, everything. If you are looking for a strong story with beautiful romance then Unlovable is for you!

~Book Passion for Life.blogspot.com

Unlovable is truly an amazing story. This story had me captivated from page one and even though I finished it a few hours ago, I'm still thinking about it now. Sherry has created a heart breaking story that will leave us readers with hope that everyone can be loved and will get a happy ending they deserve.

 

~Xpressoreads.blogspot.com

Real, raw, undeniable emotions run through the pages of this amazing book. It's an eye opener and while writing this review, with a heart doubled in size, I'm experiencing a whirlwind of emotions just by reminiscing what I've read. If you aren't touched by this novel at all, you are definitely a rock. Really, I want to give a virtual standing ovation to Sherry Gammon. I cannot express into words how much I loved {Unlovable}. I then want you to give it to your mom, your grandmother, your whole family, even read it to your dog, because this story-it needs to be shared.

About the Author

Unlovable was Sherry's debut novel and quickly rose to many top seller lists on Amazon. She is pleased to announce that Unlovable is currently being made into a movie. She has added two more novels to her body of work. Souls in Peril, the poignant story of Max Sanchez who is on a journey to help the struggling JD Miller survive high school, and Pete & Tink, a fun, light-hearted novella of a manga-loving geek and and five-and-a-half inch fairy.
Sherry and her husband, along with their children and a couple of crazy dogs, call Upstate New York home. It is where she spends her nights writing instead of sleeping.{:
Her Blog is:WordpaintingsUnlimited.com
Unlovable Video book trailer:
youtube.com/watch?v=AGsz1q_DYZM
Souls in Peril book trailer:
youtube.com/watch?v=0ZoHO_sfP8c

Product Details

• File Size: 593 KB
• Print Length: 520 pages
• Publisher: Wordpaintings Unlimited; 1 edition (January 19, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B004K1F9BA
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,852 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Clean and exciting June 27, 2011

By Courtney

Format:Kindle Edition

Unlovable was everything I thought it would be! I read some reviews of this book before I read it and was fully prepared for what it had to offer and I was actually surprised! It was a lot better than the one negative review I've read... a lot! This is about a young girl, Maggie, which is a senior in high school that struggles daily to survive. She lives in a trailer with her alcoholic mother and barely gets enough food because her mother spends all her money on booze. Maggie continually questions whether or not she is lovable because she hasn't been told by her mother that she is loved since she was a toddler.

I really enjoyed the characters despite the fact that there were some minor stereotypes going on. I think the author nailed Maggie as a true to character abused and sad young girl. Living with an alcoholic mother can really mess with a kid and this seemed evident with Maggie. The other main character was Seth, an undercover MET cop that is working at the high school pretending to be a popular student to try to find out who is selling drugs to the kids. He seemed a bit too perfect at times but I just really adored him. He had values and stuck to them, he was nice, sexy (which is always great in a hero) and he was a bit shy with how to flirt and impress the girl he wants and I found that delightful.

There aren't a whole lot of young adult books out there that offer clean but exciting romances and I was thrilled that Unlovable was one of those books!! There was plenty of kissing scenes and danger that kept this book alive and exciting. I would let my young girl, 11 and up read this story without worrying about content.

Even though this book did suffer some predictability I still enjoyed reading it and in-fact I couldn't seem to put it down. I was worried about what was going to happen to the mother, the drug issue and fragile state of Maggie all the way through.

There were some grammatical errors but it really didn't deter from the story at all. I barely noticed a few of them and they are in no way significant to distracting the reader.

I really was invested in all the characters, and I'm excited to learn that there is going to be additional stories on Booker and Cole. I will be picking up a copy of those when they are released because I really want to read some more about the lovable secondary characters.

Thank you to Sherry Gammon for providing me a copy of Unlovable for my honest review. All opinions are my own!

46 of 59 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Excuse me, waiter, there's piety in my soup. June 2, 2011

By Shutterbird13

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

*SPOILER ALERT*

The premise of this book is a good one, but, sadly, it was not well executed. Setting aside the fact that it would really benefit from a heavy session with an editor (seriously, grammatical errors galore), it simply wasn't very well written. One dimensional and sloppy, every character suffered from a serious case of predictability. Our female protagonist, Maggie, is a study in contradictions. On one page she's presented as the sort of unofficial mascot of the school (she's so sweet, everyone loves her), and the next, she's invisible and/or reviled because she's poor and her mom's an alcoholic. I fought a losing battle in trying to like Maggie. I found her to be self-pitying, bitter, judgmental, and silly. She often knows she's being unfair and ridiculous, but that doesn't seem to stop her from continuing to behave like a spoiled five-year-old. She's not real bright, as evidenced by the fact that she continually does stupid things. Seth tells her to stay in the car, she doesn't listen and manages to be taken hostage. Booker and Seth tell her not to deactivate the alarms and leave the house because it will lead to disaster, but does she listen? Of course not. She deactivates the code and leaves the house. Not just once, but twice.

Our male protagonist, Seth, is mind-numbingly boring. He's a super hot secret agent man with a perfect house, plenty of money, a philanthropic spirit, perfect manners, pristine morals Zzzzzzzz. He would have benefited greatly from a little dose of imperfection....something to make him seem, oh, I don't know, HUMAN. The only thing he actually does "wrong" in the book is keep his undercover status a secret from Maggie which, let's face it, isn't wrong when you consider his career and life are dependent on secrecy.

The cast of supporting characters range from the irritatingly pious (Seth's friend and commander, Booker) to the insanely melodramatic and ridiculous (Zack and Hillary who seem to be competing for the title of World's Most Ridiculous Stereotype).

The moral lessons being preached in the book are frequent and glaring. While I don't condone drug and alcohol abuse, the ills of using are dramatically overstated. Drug users are turned into rabid, snarling psychopaths who are capable of anything. Maggie's mother is a mean drunk and we're reminded of this on every.frickin.page.

Police procedure is obviously not a concern of Ms. Gammon's, either, as in one scene, several bags of heroine are found and three sets of fingerprints are documented and identified before Seth and Booker even make it back to the station to interrogate a suspect. I'm sorry, the last time I checked, law-enforcement officials don't carry around some kind of portable fingerprint identifier machine. This is only one example of the several ludicrous scenes in this book.

Seth's friend and commanding officer, Booker, is extremely off-putting with his obnoxious and condescending nature, but towards the end of the book, the relationship between him and Maggie reached astoundingly awkward levels. I actually found myself wondering, on more than one occasion, if Ms. Gammon weren't trying to set up some sort of Ménage à trois between Maggie, Booker, and Seth. Honestly, it would have made the book more interesting. But alas, it was not to be since Seth was raised by a chaplain and is a strictly "no sex before marriage" kind of guy *pause for extreme eyeroll*

Perhaps Ms. Gammon believes that this kind of story is beneficial for young girls, but I couldn't disagree more. In several scenes in the book, Maggie is harassed (and at one point physically assaulted) by her ex-boyfriend, yet she does absolutely nothing about it. I know this is supposed to underscore the fact that Maggie doesn't believe she's worth the trouble, but Ms. Gammon is walking a dangerous line here and doing a disservice to her young readers by portraying a girl who can't even stand up for herself against the most glaring of social injustices. The fact that the ex-boyfriend is killed toward the end of the book only serves to highlight some bizarre apathetic outlook on Ms. Gammon's part. Maggie was going to "talk to a teacher" about what Zack did. A tip, Ms. Gammon; generally, when a girl is assaulted by a man two-to-three times her size, calling the police and pressing charges is a smart, self-empowered move.

I also have a problem with the way sex and men are portrayed in this book. Seth is perfect for Maggie because he doesn't pressure her physically. I agree that no man should pressure a girl into having sex when she isn't ready, but I'm bothered by the fact that it would appear the only reason Seth isn't pressuring Maggie is because he doesn't believe in having sex before marriage. The impression one gets is that men who DON'T believe in waiting until marriage to have sex WILL pressure girls to have sex with them. Highly unfair and highly inaccurate. Would it have been too much to ask that Seth not pressure Maggie to have sex merely because he's a decent human being? Or am I missing the point and this is supposed to underscore that idea that the only "decent human beings" are those who would wait until they're married to have sex? I don't like the implications.

To sum it up; sex is bad, drugs are bad, alcohol is bad. Boys who have sex won't respect you and are more likely to take drugs and turn into psychotic rapists. Parents who drink don't love their children. Alcoholics are mean.

Black and white, there is no gray area. I'm sorry, human beings (and especially teenaged human beings) don't generally work that way. There are ALWAYS gray areas, Ms. Gammon, and you do your readers and mankind in general a disservice by attempting to claim otherwise.

When I finished the book, I felt like I'd been beaten about the head and neck with a Bible by the morality police. Believe it or not, those old after-school specials got nothin' on this tripe.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Read! August 15, 2011

By Somer

Format:Kindle Edition

Book Basics

Title: Unlovable

Author: Sherry Gammon

Published January 20th 2011 by Sherry Gammon, via Smashwords

Format Read: e-copy provided by the author for an honest review

Number of Pages: 330

This is book #1 in the Port Fare Series

Summary From Goodreads:

Port Fare, New York, has fallen into the clutches of true evil. The Dreser brothers have arrived with a scheme to increase drug sales in the area by whatever means possible. Seth Prescott is part of MET, Mobile Enforcement Teams, a branch of the DEA. He's been assigned to work undercover at Port Fare High, and things aren't going very well, until senior Maggie Brown enters the equation. He's harbored a secret crush on her from day one, and now that she is in the center of the case, he's trying to stay clear and objective while walking the line between business and unrequited love.
Maggie is truly the poster child for Heroin Chic, complete with jutting bones and dark-ringed eyes, but is she an addict, or is there another reason for her appearance? She struggles with her feelings for Seth, fearing he is just another person who will eventually let her down, as everyone in her life has done thus far.
Maggie has spent her life caring for her alcoholic mother. A task that has left her heavily burdened and alone. Before long, her mother's health takes a turn for the worst, sending Maggie's life into a tale-spin.
While Seth works relentlessly to inject fear into the dealers and flush them out into the open, Maggie fights to stay alive as the hunt turns deadly.
Seth and Maggie's romantic journey is one of humor, heartbreak, and self-discovery.

What made me keep turning the page?

My concern for Maggie and her well being
Maggie's selfless character
My love for Seth!
The fact that I thought about the characters even when I wasn't reading the book
The romance between Maggie and Seth
Wanting to know when/if Maggie would find out the truth about Seth and how she would respond
Wanting Maggie and her mother to have some kind of resolution
The mystery of when and how the "bad guys" were going to strike

Any complaints?

Nope!

Recommendation:

Fans of contemporary romantic fiction
Fans of mysteries

Final Thoughts...
I have enjoyed many "clean" books in the past, but let's be honest sometimes they can be boring. That is NOT the case with Unlovable! This book was filled with romance, murder, drugs, dysfunctional family relationships, and constant action; all while staying clean, considering the heavy topics. This book brought out so many emotions! I felt compassion and admiration for Maggie. I felt anger at her mother. I felt appreciation and amazement for Seth. I felt disgust for the Dreser Brothers. (I could go on and on!)

Unlovable was like James Patterson meets Sarah Dessen or Jennifer Echols. It had a contemporary feel to it, as well as some great edge of your seat mystery.

More About the Author

Unlovable was Sherry's debut novel and quickly rose to many top seller lists on Amazon. She is pleased to announce that Unlovable is currently being made into a movie. She has added two more novels to her body of work. Souls in Peril, the poignant story of Max Sanchez who is on a journey to help the struggling JD Miller survive high school, and Pete & Tink, a fun, light-hearted novella of a manga-loving geek and and five-and-a-half inch fairy.

Sherry and her husband, along with their children and a couple of crazy dogs, call Upstate New York home. It is where she spends her nights writing instead of sleeping.{:
Her Blog is:www.WordpaintingsUnlimited.com

Unlovable Video Book Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGsz1q_DYZM

Unbelievable Video Book Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzbmXN-4F0M

Souls in Peril Book Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZoHO_sfP8c