Reviewed by Stephen K
TITLE: You’re the One for Me
Series: (Colette International #2)
AUTHOR: Zelda French
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 407 Pages
RELEASE DATE: July 22nd 2021
BLURB:
Guarded and studious, sixteen-year-old aspiring actor Zak favors being alone above all else… Except perhaps Alberto, the Italian god from Drama Club, with whom he’s secretly in love.
When their drama teacher takes the club to the French countryside to shoot a short film, Zak decides to temporarily hang his introvert hat and joins the party, confident Alberto will be cast as his love interest.
Only… By accident or by mistake, the beloved — and most likely overrated — star football player Eric is chosen to play Alberto’s part. But it cannot be! Zak hates everything about Eric. For starters, he’s not Alberto. Besides, he’s a straight jock, an impossible flirt who takes nothing seriously, and especially not Zak’s attempts to keep him at a distance.
If he wants to be seen as the professional actor he always claimed to be, and still get the chance to impress Alberto, Zak must set aside his resentment and put up with Eric and his boisterous ways, at least until filming is over.
But as time goes by, stuck in the middle of nowhere with the most popular boy at school, Zak quickly sees his opinion of Eric shift from sworn enemy to endearing new friend, and soon his feelings for him threaten to grow into something far more dangerous.
His vulnerable and inexperienced heart only a small kiss away from being shattered, Zak will have to ask himself the right questions and undergo significant changes if he hopes to obtain true love at last.
REVIEW:
I was curious when this came up as a book available for review. I’d really enjoyed Anna and the French Kiss and thought a M/M variation on that theme might be a lot of fun.
I also sometimes enjoy young adult romances that are presented from a single character POV. It’s a bit like listening to a complaining young friend, and helps one maintain the perspective of a world where pretty much everything revolves around you. It’s sometimes fun to see the foibles that the narrator misses in himself, and in some way it makes them more endearing.
It’s also relatively low angst… sure the youngster will be “inconsolably crushed” if the “crush de jour” doesn’t work out but it’s no surprise to us “sadder but wiser” folks, that young hearts heal quickly.
That said, the single character POV can be hard to maintain. If that single character is as myopic as 16 year old clueless Zak here is… double that. It actually made the book a bit frustrating toward the middle. Even the most amenable reader eventually runs out of patience.
Several other early reviewers have criticized this book as being a bit long. While I never found it to be boring, it was a bit frustrating at spots. This is the second book in a series and I wondered (more than once) if the parts that dragged weren’t at least in part due to my not having read the first part. I also speculated as to whether it might have improved the book to have known what the other characters were thinking (and in some cases doing.) Seeing parts of this story unfold from Eric’s POV might have made this more interesting but would have made the whole “it’s finally dawning on the dope” epiphany part less satisfying. Even seeing parts from Alberto’s or even Arthur’s POV might have been fun. As it is, Zac was a bit of an odd choice for the narrator as he’s not the most interesting and certainly the least insightful.
Still the book features a number of characters that you’ll enjoy spending time with. Though there are also a few you’d just like grab by the shoulders and shake a bit.
Over the years I’ve seen a good number of French films. This book had the pacing and feel of some of my favorites of those. This title evokes a bit of the magic found in the book Call Me By Your Name with a bit of the whimsy of the film Côte d’Azur (2005) Adding to this “continental feel” is that the author’s native language is not English. While her British English sometimes confused this mid-western raised “Yank”, it also added to the atmosphere.
This might be the perfect book to read on a trip or a beach weekend. It has that relaxed pace, and the characters are certainly worth spending a “weekend in the country” with. However, given that the protagonist is barely legal don’t expect anything too steamy.
RATING: 
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