Taming the Rebel

3.5 stars — This one started off fairly strong, but petered out a teensy bit at the end for me. Rebel was actually pretty hilarious throughout the story. She was snarky and sassy, and just fun to be in the head of. She reminded me a LOT of Isis from the Lovely Vicious series. She had this slightly skewed view on reality, but she was a good kid in general. I loved how growing up with gay fathers shaped her to try not to let insults get to her. She wouldn’t be human if they never did, but in general she was very much okay with who she was and I admired that. I thought she could have tried a wee bit harder to see things from Justice’s perspective, but overall I got her. Justice was a conundrum. He could be so sweet and swoony — I loved that he had this vicious case of impostor syndrome in some ways, where he still felt like the awkward social outcast even as he was the QB now. And I totally felt for what he went through, and I *know* how that can affect you for a long time. BUT. But. I…just was a bit bummed with how he handled being teased about his father. Maybe not at the beginning, but I expected him to change faster…or maybe show that he was starting to change in the middle of the book. I mean, at the end of camp it felt like he still hadn’t learned anything, and then he had a sudden turnaround. It just wasn’t believable for me. Now I did enjoy the two of them together. They had great banter, great chemistry in other ways as well. There were some sweet kissing scenes as well. There were quite a few great secondary characters. Loved Rebel’s Dad, he seemed kind of awesome. Loved Aubrey, it was awesome to see Rebel have a supportive friend, but one who was straight with her. And enjoyed the little hints of Eli as well. Gray I could have done without. So yeah, it was a solid YA, I just wanted a bit more growth to get to that finale.