Review: Love, Latte and Mutants

"'Miss Dunn, are we keeping you awake?' Mr. Grumble's sarcastic remark draws titters from the class. I jerk upright. 'No Mr. Grumble.' Heat floods my face..."

(Love, Latte and Mutants, opening page)

Blurb:

Finding love is hard, even when you aren’t a mutant.

Like most seventeen-year-olds, Piper Dunn wants to blend in with the crowd. Having a blowhole is a definite handicap. A product of a lab-engineered mother with dolphin DNA, Piper spends her school days hiding her brilliant ocean-colored eyes and sea siren voice behind baggy clothing and ugly glasses. When Tyler, the new boy in school, zeroes in on her, ignoring every other girl vying for his attention, no one, including Piper, understands why...

What I loved:

The idea of being a mutant in a very teenaged, very normal world. This was incredibly unique and I've never actually read a book where our heroine has a blowhole and can stay underwater saving animals for a half hour at a time.

Gramps. He was a great secondary character and added a lot of humanity to the book.

Tyler and Piper. I'll mention below what I struggled with, but for the most part, I felt that electricity the author wrote in their interactions. I loved it.

What I struggled with:
The book was really a lot shorter than it should have been to cover what was being covered. I felt like the crux of the obstacle (finding out Piper's beginnings and mutants like her) came way too late in the book and we really spent a lot of time stuck in that "do i like him? should i like him? okay, i might like him" awkward love drama phase. 

I understand that it plays an big role in teenage romance (especially in YA) but it ate up the focus of the first two-thirds of the book so much so that I felt like we were rushed into the ending without much time to catch up as a reader.

I also never really got why Tyler was so insistent on getting to know Piper (don't get me wrong, I'm glad he did...) Was it really just because she didn't fawn over him? Was there a deeper reason he was attracted to her that we'll discover later? Their romance (as sparkly and fun as it was) really felt a little rushed and crammed into a matter of a few days.

I give this book LOTS of points for trying a new route in YA and really did enjoy reading it for the most part...I just felt like we were ushered along to a very fast ending just to lead us to a cliffhanger to book 2.

DETAILS

Title: Love, Lattes and Mutants

Series: Mutants, Book One

Author: Sandra Cox

Publisher: Kensington (February 2015)

Price: $2.99

Author Website: sandracox1.com

Author Twitter: @sandra_cox

Goodreads review available here.

(Review copy provided by NetGalley. Opinions are my own!)