strictly not yours

By Carrie Elks

I will forever defend a girl, EXCEPT FROM THIS BOOK.

The Ugly Truth:

I had sooooo many questions when I was rotting my brain – sorry – when I was reading Strictly Not Yours, the first being, is everyone okay? Why is this book getting the reviews and ratings that it is? And WHY is anyone comparing it to Cinderella?

The book is told from the POV of Blair, who is working multiple jobs to pay for her college courses and support her sisters and nephew. One of her jobs is to clean the apartment of the ever-elusive and startling handsome oncologist Holden Salinger (yes, like a few authors and book characters). Instead of just doing her job and getting from point A to point B, Blair is a big snoop and discovers Holden’s surprising hobby – underground fighting. Now, instead of being a normal person and just cataloging that information away, she inserts herself in his life by becoming a bartender at the ring. Holden is immediately taken with her, and the two start up a friendship that quickly turns into a “situation. 

Here is where I start to run into the big problem of the book, why the heck is she not just honest? He asks her multiple times what she does other than being a bartender and seems genuinely interested in who she is as a person, but she is just too much of a wimp to admit that she was his cleaning lady first. Now a lot of people are writing reviews saying that HOLDEN should be the one to grovel after he discovers the truth, but is NO ONE ELSE realizing how utterly insane and scary that is?? This man is a high profile oncologist with a ton of money and a girl, who is struggling for funds, literally went out of her and got involved in his life? No matter which way you spin it, that seems like stalker behavior and he had EVERY RIGHT to flip the heck out.

I honestly think that is why I got mad at this book. Like fine, the story was okay, the characters eh, but what really sent it down was the fact that HE had to come back begging and HE was told off multiple times when if it happened to ANYONE in REALITY people would be like ooo that’s uhm pretty weird and scary??