I wasn't sure how much I was going to enjoy this book - Easton wasn't my favourite character in the first trilogy of this series and at times he felt like more of a plot device than a character in his own right - but hey, it's Erin Watt, so I was never going to not read this book.
And actually I did enjoy it. Maybe not as much as I loved the first three books, but it was still a good read and I'm glad I picked it up.
Easton does get developed a lot in this book and we start to see behind the party boy facade (OK, it's not much of a facade as he really is just a party boy) and I liked what I saw. His true character is more complex than you'd first think and you get to see more of his relationship with his brothers.
This episode is like the first three books in that it's a completely soap-opera plot filled with rich teenagers who are more like jaded thirty-year-olds and not a parent to be seen among the lot of them. It shouldn't work, but it totally, totally did. Like, this series is never going to win the Pulitzer Prize, but it doesn't have to. It's emotional and fun and escapist.
So after getting into a compromising position with a teacher (I know!) Easton meets a new girl in school, Hartley Wright. She rebuffs his advances initially, so after stalking her creepily in order to get into her knickers, he finally hits on the winning idea of being her friend (not because he wants to be her friend, or because he respects that she doesn't want to sleep with him. He becomes her friend to get her into bed). But Hartley is a girl with a nasty past and a tangled present and when you introduce ol' crash-and-burn Easton Royal into the mix, things go about as well as you can imagine.
I liked the characters (we see a bit of Ella and Reed), the plot was bonkers but great and although I don't like alpha males and Easton came across as a perve-slash-stalker I really got behind the whole story.
So yeah,. Totally unbelievable stuff. Totally compelling.
4 stars