Unlovable

Title:
Unlovable

Author:
Sherry Gammon

Published:
January 20, 2011

Genre:
Fiction, YA, Thriller, Suspense

About the Author: (Smashwords)
Unlovable is the debut novel for author Sherry Gammon, and is the first novel in the Port Fare Series. Seeking clean romance novels for her and her three daughters to read and enjoy was no easy challenge. It was because of this frustration the PORT FARE SERIES was born. UNLOVABLE is book one, book two titled UNBELIEVABLE is the story of Cole's journey for love, and the final novel in the series, UNBEARABLE, is Booker's story.

Sherry has been writing for several years. Her work has been in several newspapers, and an educational Magazine.She and her husband,along with their children and a couple of crazy dogs, call Upstate New York home.

Summary: (Smashwords)
Port Fare, New York, has fallen into the clutches of true evil. The Dreser brothers have arrived with a scheme to increase drug sales in the area by whatever means possible. Seth Prescott is part of MET, Mobile Enforcement Teams, a branch of the DEA. He's been assigned to work undercover at Port Fare High, and things aren't going very well, until senior Maggie Brown enters the equation. He's harbored a secret crush on her from day one, and now that she is in the center of the case, he's trying to stay clear and objective while walking the line between business and unrequited love.

Maggie is truly the poster child for Heroin Chic, complete with jutting bones and dark-ringed eyes, but is she an addict, or is there another reason for her appearance? She struggles with her feelings for Seth, fearing he is just another person who will eventually let her down, as everyone in her life has done thus far.
Maggie has spent her life caring for her alcoholic mother. A task that has left her heavily burdened and alone. Before long, her mother's health takes a turn for the worst, sending Maggie's life into a tale-spin.
While Seth works relentlessly to inject fear into the dealers and flush them out into the open, Maggie fights to stay alive as the hunt turns deadly.
Seth and Maggie's romantic journey is one of humor, heartbreak, and self-discovery.

I'd Recommend To...
Teenagers

My Rating:
4.8/5

My Thoughts:
Well, first of, let me just say that I have a 5-page English Paper, some Spanish homework, and Honors PreCalc Extra Credit that I need to do, that's due in about 16 hours, that I haven't even started because I was too preoccupied with this book! Oh, and I have to create 1 minute, 30 seconds choreography to dance to Barbie Girl, too. But that's not due until Thursday. Oh well! xD
Just kidding, it's only a 5-paragraph English paper, not 5 pages (the rest are all true though, and I have to annotate another story for English, too) hahahahahaha!!! But seriously, this book was so good that I did not want to put it down, at all.
Seth Prescott is an undercover MET agent, posing as a senior at Port Fare High School, in western New York. It is his job to find out who is using drugs, especially heroin, so he can track down the dealer, to track the supplier. He is handsome, rich, and powerful enough that when he is assigned to be friends with the populars, he has no problem - in fact, the head cheerleader, Hillary, develops a "crush" on him, though he instead notices a quiet, much too thin, girl named Maggie Brown. A while later, while trying to sum up the courage to ask her out, his mission gets switched to watch out for Barbara Brown, and her daughter, none other than Maggie Brown herself! From the start, Seth doesn't believe she is doing drugs, especially with her 4.0 GPA and kid-loving nature, but none the less, has to make sure. Little does he know, she has noticed him, too, and falls well into his plan, though her guard is up, and she won't let him get to far in her heart, since her own mother, a drunk 24/7, has not once told her she loves her, and instead only expresses her love toward Vodka, throwing nasty, emotionally-scarring, hurtful verbal abuses at her daughter. Eventually, she lets her many walls down, only to have some drug dealers try and kill her mother, and break her heart, telling her the truth about who Seth is. After a while, they come to terms with each other, expressing a common theme of "true love conquers over all". This book is a roller-coaster of emotions for Maggie, and since it is so, well, its hard to image it ever actually happening, but its written so life-like that it definitely seems real, that at some points its an emotional roller coaster for those reading it, too.
Unlovable was one of those rare ones where I could actually visualize what was happening, and that never happens. It happened for part of one other book, but usually the visualizing happens in daydreams during class after I've read a good book.
The plot was pretty good and had you on edge pretty much the whole time. At some parts, like when you knew that Maggie was going to find out and flip out on Seth, you could predict, but the prediction always turned up to be at least a little bit different of the actual storyline.
The dialogue was very realistic as well, so props to that! The teenaged librarian spoke with such a teenagish dialect, it truly made the story more realistic. She used "like" all the time, something that I myself happen to do all the time, so I could relate, making the story more real.
In the story, it seemed Booker and Cole, sometimes even Seth, were saying how young Maggie is. She most definitely is too young for Booker, being 10 years her elder, but Seth is only 3 and a half years her senior, which to me seems the perfect amount of an age difference.
One thing that sort of bugged me, but not immensely, was the fact that Seth comes from the rich side of town, while Maggie is often referred to as "Trailer Trash". It seems in all plot lines, the two come from different worlds, such as this. Other examples are one being human while the other is a vampire, one being a geek, the other a princess or goth, or something other than the usual for whatever the scenario may be. But I guess that it simply adds to the well-known saying 'Opposites attract'.
The Preface and part of the last chapter before the Epiloge did confuse me a bit. It was the exact same,
"Before I could reach his lifeless form, Alan grabbed my face and lifted me onto my tiptoes; my lungs battered begged for air. Dragging his slimy mouth along my neck he muttered, “I’ve waited so long to have you, I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to control myself as long as I’d hoped.”

He then stopped and pinched his eyes shut before dropping me back to the ground. “No, Alan, you can wait a bit longer for your revenge,” he counseled himself while stroking my hair. “But maybe a little taste wouldn’t hurt.” He jerked my face to his, dropping his foul lips to mine.
Something inside me snapped. If I was going to die, I was going to go out fighting, so fight I did. I raked my fingers over his face, digging up flesh, and while forcing my thumbs into his eyes, I brought my leg up between his, hard, crushing his groin.
He stumbled and fell on top of me, pinning my battered body to the ground. His weight added unwanted pressure to my already tender ribs, and I screamed out.
However, Alan’s screams overshadowed mine; he was in serious pain. I began scratching, biting, and punching every inch of him I could make purchase with, holding nothing back. Still reeling from my well-placed knee, he spewed out a list of profanities a mile long as I broke free and forced my broken body across the kitchen floor toward the gun. I was almost to the drawer, when, from his prostate position, he hooked my foot, dragging me back several feet.
I looked back at his sweaty face, now scarred and bleeding thanks to my fingernails as he leered at me. “You. Will. Pay. For. That.” Reaching into a pocket by his left knee" (Gammon 3), yet then, in Chapter 1, it went to talk about a girl whom Alan had previously killed who had a 6th degree black belt in karate, or something along those lines. When I got to this part in the last chapter, it throughly confused me, but I kept reading anyway, and assumed that the author provied that as the preface as a way of foreshadowing, instead of having that lead up to how the story would start, which was an interesting way of doing so, even if it was a bit confusing.
Overall, I really did enjoy this book and I cannot wait to read books 2 and 3 in the Port Fare series, Unbelievable and Unbearable. I would definately recommend this book to my friends, and I hope most of you get the chance to read it.