Love Me Never (Lovely Vicious #1)
by Sara Wolf
Publisher: Entangled: Teen
Release Date: April 5th 2016
Synopsis:
Previously published as Lovely Vicious, this fully revised and updated edition is full of romance, intrigue, and laugh-out-loud moments.
Don’t love your enemy. Declare war on him.
Seventeen-year-old Isis Blake hasn’t fallen in love in three years, nine weeks, and five days, and after what happened last time, she intends to keep it that way. Since then she’s lost eighty-five pounds, gotten four streaks of purple in her hair, and moved to Buttcrack-of-Nowhere, Ohio, to help her mom escape a bad relationship.
All the girls in her new school want one thing—Jack Hunter, the Ice Prince of East Summit High. Hot as an Armani ad, smart enough to get into Yale, and colder than the Arctic, Jack Hunter's never gone out with anyone. Sure, people have seen him downtown with beautiful women, but he's never given high school girls the time of day. Until Isis punches him in the face.
Jack’s met his match. Suddenly everything is a game.
The goal: Make the other beg for mercy.
The game board: East Summit High.
The reward: Something neither of them expected.
What would Isis do? by Sara Wolf
Thanks for having me! I’m Sara Wolf, and I’m super excited to talk to you all about my favorite character; ISIS! She’s from my new book, LOVE ME NEVER, and the topic today is what would she do if her heart was broken, which is an awesome subject.
I’m not exaggerating here when I say Isis is the master of heartbreak. She’s a wizard, a maven, the absolute president of Heartbreaksville. Her heartbreak is a major theme of LOVE ME NEVER, and the whole book in general, so I’m psyched to talk about it.
Isis was pretty young when her heart was broken – newly fourteen. The urge to fit in is so strong during that age, and the urge for love and affection as a human is pretty constant for most people. So Isis was looking for both, especially since her parents were in the middle of an ugly divorce and she hadn’t had much affection in a while. Isis turned to Will Cavanaugh, a boy she had a crush on, blindly doing everything she could to make herself attractive to him – by doing everything he said, going everywhere he went, trying hard to be friends with his friends. When he broke her heart and betrayed her, she closed up pretty hard. She was disgusted with who she’d become for him, so she changed everything about herself; going so far as to lose a bunch of weight and changing her hairstyle. She lashed out pretty hard at this time towards the people who were friends with him, starting fights at her school. These things aren’t necessarily healthy, but when you get your heartbroken you don’t tend to think clearly, or do things that are good for you. Her self-worth was shattered completely.
There’s a lot of stages of heartbreak, and once Isis’s anger phase faded a little, she got into the mourning phase. She built strong walls of sarcasm and wit around herself, decorating it with a deep distrust for men, or anyone who tried to get close to her or compliment her. She’s so disgusted with the girl she used to be, the girl who was used and abused, that she genuinely can’t believe the good things people say about her, much to Jack’s frustration. In LOVE ME NEVER, she’s still a long way off from the acceptance stage of heartbreak, but she’s taking small baby steps using her own willpower and getting helped along the path by Jack, who knows similar heartbreak.
I wrote LOVE ME NEVER knowing Isis was damaged and in denial, but I didn’t know just how much until the story unfolded. Heartbreak is the worst, and the recovery can take months or even years, and only with the help of a lot of people who love us no matter how ugly our pain. Good friends and good family can help you so much, and Isis makes a little bit of both in LOVE ME NEVER. Isis definitely learns that only when our hearts are mended can we open them up again to other people.
“Who are you waiting for?”
Knife Kid asks.
“That obvious, huh?”
“Jack, then. Screaming at him
wasn’t enough?”
“He was the one who put the
pictures of me all over school. Hell no, screaming isn’t enough.”
Knife Kid nods. “I saw the
pictures. I had fun slashing them with my protractor. Nobody should be made fun
of like that, I think.”
I don’t know whether to smile
at how sweet he sounds or become extremely concerned at how creepy he sounds. I
settle for a little of both just as Jack comes in. He walks right by and
settles in his desk behind me. I turn and watch him take off his backpack.
“Hi.” I wave.
It takes him a moment to
recognize me. Or a million. He focuses his gaze on me, then looks boredly to
the window. He puts his chin in his hand, studies a pigeon in a tree with
utmost intensity, and then all at once his eyes go wide. He swivels his head
slowly back to me.
“You,” he murmurs.
“Me!” I chirp.
“What the hell are you doing
in that?” he asks, eyes sweeping down to my chest, my legs, and up again.
“Damage control.” I smile.
“Do you like it?”
“I’ve seen pigs dressed
better.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt
that, considering you see one in the mirror every morning.”
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Sara Wolf is a twenty-something author who adores baking, screaming at her cats, and screaming at herself while she types hilarious things. When she was a kid, she was too busy eating dirt to write her first terrible book. Twenty years later, she picked up a keyboard and started mashing her fists on it and created the monster known as the Lovely Vicious series. She lives in San Diego with two cats, a crippling-yet-refreshing sense of self-doubt, and not enough fruit tarts ever.
