All the Rage

NEW ADULT ROMANCE

​Title: All the Rage
Author: T.M. Frazier
Publication date: 06/07/2016
Publisher: T.M. Frazier
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Cliffhanger: No
Rating: 2 out of 5

Blurb (from Amazon.com):
They call me Rage.
My real name is like a shadow, always close behind, but never quite able to catch up.
I fly under the radar because no one ever suspects I’m capable of the kind of brutal violence I commit each and every day.
You see, I’m a girl. I’m nineteen.
And I'm a killer.
This life is all I know. It’s all I want to know. It keeps the shit buried that I need kept buried. It allows me to live without thinking too much.
Without dwelling on the past.

Until him.
It all changes when an ordinary boy becomes my next target.
And my first love.
I have to choose.
The only life I’ve ever known has to die, or he does.
Either way, I’ll be the one pulling the trigger...

My review
Hello, Unpopular Opinion Crew! Nice to see you again! It’s been a while. I’ve missed y’all.

This book was an impulse download for me. Young, cute, Barbie-looking contract killer? Yep. I’m all in. But sadly, I had tons of problems with this read:

1. Holy crappy editing, Batman! I’m not normally a grammar Nazi, but man, there were A LOT of errors in this book. Missing words, misspelled words, misused words...this book pretty much displayed every example of why self-published authors need to hire an editor—or at the very least, a proofreader. Yikes.
2. Rage was described as a textbook sociopath. Her falling in love with Nolan is highly improbable. Honestly, her falling in love with anyone is highly improbable.
3. The villain that pops up out of nowhere at the end of the book? He was completely unnecessary. These two had enough obstacles between them that adding a villain to the story did nothing but irritate me.
4. What happened at the end of the story with Rage and Smoke was disgusting and completely unnecessary. It did nothing to move the story along or help the characters grow in any way. Again, all it did was piss me off. And frankly, the whole scene was a slightly-tweaked rip-off of something I saw on Sons of Anarchy, so it even failed to piss me off in an original way. Epic author fail, in my opinion.
5. Nolan falls for Rage fairly quickly, despite the fact that they’re both keeping epically big secrets from each other. Not exactly the basis for a solid happily ever after, which is the whole point of a romance novel.
6. The comment at the end about Nolan’s summer being “all the rage” was a ham-handed, lame way to reference the title. Totally eye-roll inducing.

So, at the end of the day, this book gets 2 stars: 1 for Rage and 1 for Nolan, because I did like them as characters. I just didn’t like their story, and frankly, didn’t find them to be particularly believable or well-matched as a couple. Their chemistry was great, so maybe they could be successful friends with benefits? I dunno.

And with that, I stick my nose up in the air, turn on my heel, drop the mic and flounce away, never to return to this series again.    

Does this book contribute to or help crush the romance stigma? 
It definitely gets points for covering some pretty serious territory, but it abruptly loses them for the lack of editing. And that ending? It’s definitely not doing the romance stigma any favors. So, all in all, I’d say this one contributes to the romance stigma.  

Other reading suggestions
If you’re into sexy, kinda dirty YA hitman stories, try Last Hit by Jen Frederick and Jessica Clare. For an unconventional, tough, emotionally-stunted heroine, try The Drowning Game, by LS Hawker. (Fair warning, though: there’s very little romance in The Drowning Game. I just had to recommend it, though. It’s a great read.)  For a sexy, dark, Bonnie and Clyde sort of read, try the In the Company of Killers books by JA Redmerski. ​

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