Review - Chain Reaction by Simone Elkeles

Chain Reaction (Perfect Chemistry #3) by Simone Elkeles
Goodreads / Librarything

Genre: Contemporary Young Adult

Rating: 2.5 stars
Pages: 308
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (UK) Walker Books for Young Readers (US)

Summary: Like his brothers, Luis Fuentes is a risk taker; whether he's scaling the Rocky Mountains or dreaming of a future as an astronaut, Luis is always looking for the next thrill. Nikki Cruz lives her life by certain rules -, don't trust a boy who says "I love you", boys lie to get their own way and never date a boy from the south side of Fairfield. Then she meets Luis at his brother Alex's wedding and suddenly she's tempted to break all her rules. Getting Nikki to give him a chance is Luis's biggest challenge, until he finds himself targeted by the head of the gang that nearly destroyed his brothers' lives. Will Luis's feelings for Nikki be enough to stop him from entering a dark and violent world that could prove to be the ultimate risk?

Thoughts: I really enjoyed the first books in this trilogy, Perfect Chemistry and Rules of Attraction - they were extremely readable books that starred some surprisingly fleshed out characters. And while Chain Reaction was certainly readable, it's characters were some of the most one-dimensional I've read in a long while. In fandom, we would have called this book "crack" - the kind of story that is just so unbelievably terrible, and is yet extremely addictive. The one where Spock is pregnant with Uhura's lovechild and decides to run away on the TARDIS. This was that kind of story.

None of the new characters in this book made a lick of sense: Luis is a "good boy", but spend the last 50 or so pages oscillating between crazy and crazy with love of violence. While Nikki... ick. I don't even want to get into her. This girl had zero character and was completely defined by a traumatic experience. While I kinda "get" why Elkeles might want to traumatize her characters, you've got to give me more than just that if you want me to actually like them. *stabs them both*

Seriously, if it hadn't been such a fan of Rules of Attraction, I would never have finished this thing.

Bottom line? Disappointing ending to an otherwise entertaining series; Perfect Chemistry's is the Breaking Dawn, if you will.