Review: Addicted to You (Addicted #1)

Addicted to You (Addicted #1) by Krista Ritchie, Becca Ritchie
Age Group: New Adult
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: June 13, 2013
Buy Links:

Amazon

Book Description:

No one would suspect shy Lily Calloway’s biggest secret. While everyone is dancing at college bars, Lily stays in the bathroom. To get laid. Her compulsion leads her to one-night stands, steamy hookups and events she shamefully regrets. The only person who knows her secret happens to have one of his own.

Loren Hale’s best friend is his bottle of bourbon. Lily comes at a close second. For three years, they’ve pretended to be in a real relationship, hiding their addictions from their families. They’ve mastered the art of concealing flasks and random guys that filter in and out of their apartment.

But when they go on a family boat trip, surrounded by open seas and limited male bodies in sight, Lily’s confronted with a big fear. Only one guy onboard can fill her addiction, and she’s sworn off going there with Loren Hale ever again.

Now the only person who can truly help her can barely help himself.

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I am crying ugly tears people.

These might be the ugliest tears I’ve cried in a while, damn emotions. Addicted to You by Krista and Becca Ritchie blew me away. I don’t think I was expecting such an intense read; they took things a lot further than I thought they would and honestly I’m glad. A lot of writers are too afraid to go the distance with addiction books, but we certainly didn’t have to worry about that here.

Addicted to You follows Lily Calloway and her best friend Loren Hale (Lo) through a tumultuous battle of addiction and deceit while they attempt to hide their lies behind a fake relationship that’s teetering on a ledge threatening to spill their darkest secrets to the world.

Lily is a sex addict and while in theory that may make you giggle, it’s nothing to laugh about. Her addiction is not only embarrassing to her, but she’s constantly disappointing the people she cares about because she’s running off the feed her addiction. She sleeps with a number of strangers and is constantly going to the clinic to get tested and make sure she’s not pregnant.

Lo is an alcoholic. He’s constantly got a drink in his hand and despite the fact that he functions most of the time, he’s not nearly as okay as everyone including Lily thinks he is. He’s constantly taking things too far and drinking his emotions, is sad.

I’ve got to say as far as characters go; I genuinely enjoyed all the main characters in this book. Lily did make me want to slap her a little bit, because personally I thought it was obvious that Lo had a thing for her and the men she was parading in and out of her life hurt him even though he didn’t say anything. But I still like her character. She felt real and I felt for her.

Lo was a snarky asshole (which I love), but with Lily he was different. At times he was mean to her too, but there was always a reason. I’m pretty sure the only opinion that ever matter to Lo, was Lily’s.

I think my favorite characters outside of Lily and Lo were Rose, Conner, and Ryke. I swear the interactions between them all were awesome. Conner is hilarious. He’s so self-assured and not afraid to speak his mind. Lily and Lo spent all this time avoiding people and creating these “fake” relationships that finally having a group of friends who accepted them was strange, but also good.

I don’t want to give too much away because this is one of those books that you need to read to get the full effect of. It’s different and Lily and Lo are constantly hurting each other, but at the same time they’re also always there for each other. Their relationship is super complicated and it totally gives me a headache, but I can’t help loving them.

We get to see so many different sides of Lily and Lo and we also see the darker parts of having these addictions, which is something I loved about this story.  Addicted to You is a serious emotional rollercoaster with twists that will make your head spin and leave you fienning for more. I would highly recommend this book and for the love of all things pink and fluffy I hope the in-between book comes out son or I might go through my own withdrawals especially with the way this book ended. Remember the ugly crying? Yeah…it was from that.

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Author Bio:

Becca Ritchie is a carnivore of pop culture, television, film and of course YA and NA books. While in college, she worked at The CW television network affiliate in Atlanta and put her vampiric knowledge to good use, blogging about hit series and swooning over actors’ abs. When she’s not blogging, she writes novels and has teamed up with her twin sister. Their New Adult novel ADDICTED TO YOU comes out July of 2013.

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