Mistaken by Laurelin McGee

Mistaken by Laurelin McGee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When going to confront her friend after having set her up on a horrible blind date Jaylene Kim runs into a new neighbor moving into the building. After spending some time with Noah, Jaylene finds that the two have a lot in common including their love for reading and running. However, Jaylene considers herself a feminist and Noah’s preferences don’t seem to go with Jaylene’s beliefs.

Mistaken is a story of a mismatched relationship of one person’s beliefs are completely opposite of the other. The idea behind the story was appealing however I really didn’t care for Jaylene for about 80-85% of the story so it brought my rating down.

Jaylene is a feminist, but she’s the preachy/judgmental type that wants to push her women’s rights beliefs on others and pretty much anything that a man does seems to be wrong in her eyes. When she started on her rant about erotic literature and degrading women that choose to read it that I almost stopped reading completely. Her views are just so narrow minded that it was driving me crazy. I’m all for equal treatment of woman but that should involve choice for a woman to choose whatever she would like, including reading a dirty book if they chose to.

Jaylene’s attitude also made me sit and debate woman’s rights and her ideas more than actually getting involved into the story as I was reading. I was too busy rolling my eyes at some of her statements and actions to wonder where the relationship would lead or what would happen. I found it a little strange too that her chosen career is a teacher when that is a predominately female profession but yet she refuses to learn to cook due to the woman in the kitchen stereotypes.

Luckily the ending to this saved the story for me a bit. For the majority of the book I was really really disliking Jaylene and her judgy behavior and was considering a one star rating and not bothering to finish. I gave this three stars in the end as I did think the writing was good, I did enjoy Noah throughout, and thought Lacy’s speech to Jaylene at the end deserved a high five so all of that sort of save the story for me.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.