Review: The Mistake (Off-Campus #2)

• Title: The Mistake

• Author: Elle Kennedy

• Series: Off-Campus #2

• Genre: New Adult romance / sports romance / contemporary romance

• Rating: ☆☆.5

I loved The Deal so much that I expected this series to continue in the same manner. Alas, The Mistake fell flat for me in a few areas. I don’t know if the author is writing from her own college experience or what she envisions as college-aged behaviour, but both Logan and Grace were characters I couldn’t relate to or understand well. The storyline itself was disjointed and not cohesive enough to flow naturally. One minute, this is a story about two people who met by chance and hooked up, but due to an incident, Grace ignores Logan until he makes it known he genuinely cares about her. The next, it’s heavy in Logan’s less than stellar home life, and then it’s about the couple again. I understand what Elle Kennedy was attempting to do by writing this storyline, but it just didn’t feel executed well. There is a lot of talk/focus on sex. Although the couple doesn’t go all the way for some time, this book is littered with sexual content or thoughts and I felt it cheapened the growth of Grace and Logan as a couple and as individual characters. The ending to this book was wrapped up too neatly with a bow. One of the things I would have loved for Kennedy to explore was the heavy content of Logan’s family, and the trauma and anxiety he was feeling because of it. She started to address it further in the last third of the novel, but then smoothed it over. This left me disappointed that she had a real opportunity to show male mental health in a positive way and really build Logan up as overcoming it all. Instead, she solved “the problem” with a quick plotline making it go away and everyone lived happily ever after. The Deal, even with similar college-aged misconceptions was well put together and flowed seamlessly with real and likeable characters. Neither Grace nor Logan did that for me. I’m unsure what to expect with the third book in Off-Campus, but I do hope it redeems the Briar hockey boys from this unfortunate piece in this world.