The Truth About Jack by Jody Gehrman

Title: The Truth About Jack

Author: Jody Gehrman

Publisher: Entangled Crush

Release Date: April 14, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

Dakota McCloud has just been accepted into a prestigious art school. Soon she’ll leave behind the artists’ colony where she grew up—hippie dad, tofu since birth, yurt—and join her boyfriend and best friend on the East Coast. It was the plan…until Dakota finds out her boyfriend and best friend hooked up behind her back.

Hurt and viciously betrayed, Dakota pours out her heart on a piece of paper, places it in a bottle, and hurls it into the ocean. But it doesn’t quite go where she expects…

Jack Sauvage finds the bottle washed up on the shore and responds to Dakota’s letter. Except what if his straight-laced life doesn’t jive with the free-spirited girl he’s only seen from afar? As Jack creates a persona he believes she’ll love, they slowly fall for each other with each new letter. Now Jack is trying to find a way to make this delicate, on-paper romance happen in real life…without revealing his deception.

Every once in a while (well, a little more often than that if I’m being totally honest) I just want to read a light and fun contemporary romance. I don’t want too much drama and angst, I just want a story that’s going to take me out of my own head and leave me happy and satisfied when I finish. And that’s exactly what I got with Jody Gehrman’s The Truth About Jack.

When she gets her acceptance to the art school of her dreams, Dakota McCloud thinks her future is set. She’s going to leave the artists’ colony where she grew up behind and move to the East Coast to be with her boyfriend and her best friend. But on the day she receives her acceptance letter, Dakota also finds out that the best friend and boyfriend she was looking forward to seeing have been hooking up behind her back. Feeling lost and betrayed, Dakota writes a letter, puts it in a bottle and throws it into the ocean. Just after Dakota leaves the beach, Jack finds the message and finds himself completely intrigued by the girl who threw it. Determined to get to know her but unsure of whether she would like him, Jack invents a new persona and starts writing Dakota. As the two exchange letters, they start to fall for one another. But when they start spending time together in real life, Jack worries that his deception could cause him to lose the one person he really cares for.

Sometimes you just want a light and fun contemporary romance and that’s exactly what The Truth About Jack was. When I first heard about the book and read the description, it sounded like it could be a really fun story. Granted I was a little worried about how the whole inventing a person was going to work, but it worked in the story once it was all going down. Beyond that, the story was just the light and fun read I thought and hoped it was going to be. There was just the right amount of drama and angst to balance out the fun and lightheartedness of the story. While I enjoyed reading The Truth About Jack, though there were times when I found it hard to let myself get lost in the story, though that might have had something to do with the fact that I couldn’t seem to spend more than a few minutes at a time reading this book. Had I been able to sit down and read it for large chunks of time, my experience might have been better. But still, I enjoyed this story a lot. And though it wasn’t quite the escape I had hoped it was going to be, I found myself really liking all the characters.

Dakota was a fun and different character to read about. I mean, it’s not everyday that I’ll read a book where the main character grew up in an artist colony. In that sense, Dakota wasn’t exactly your typical YA heroine and it just made it fun to read her story. While reading, I felt absolutely horrible for her when she found out about her boyfriend and her best friend. I can’t say it’s something I’ve experienced, but I felt her pain and how lost she felt after having the one thing she was looking forward to sort of get taken away from her. And Jack just came across as a nice guy, even if he needed help coming out of his shell a little more. It was always entertaining watching him attempt to force himself out of his comfort zone and stumble through it. My only wish as far as characters are concerned was that I could have gotten to see a little more of the secondary characters, especially Anya, Attila and Joaquin. Yes, this was Jack and Dakota’s story, but I couldn’t help but feel like those three need more attention.

Jody Gehrman’s The Truth About Jack was a light, fun read that I found myself thoroughly enjoying while reading. If you’re in the mood for a cute and quick contemporary romance read, then this is the book for you.