Review: Undeclared by Jen Frederick

Title: Undeclared

By: Jen Frederick

Series: Woodlands #1

My Copy: Ebook for participating in Tour

BookWhisperer Rating:

For four years, Grace Sullivan wrote to a Marine she never met, and fell in love. But when his deployment ended, so did the letters. Ever since that day, Grace has been coasting, academically and emotionally. The one thing she’s decided? No way is Noah Jackson — or any man — ever going to break her heart again.
Noah has always known exactly what he wants out of life. Success. Stability. Control. That’s why he joined the Marines and that’s why he’s fighting his way — literally — through college. Now that he’s got the rest of his life on track, he has one last conquest: Grace Sullivan. But since he was the one who stopped writing, he knows that winning her back will be his biggest battle yet.
This is a mature New Adult book. I see that it is classified as YA - not sure how to change that - but I wanted to be clear that it has explicit love scenes in the story.

Undeclared had everything an amazing storyline, two incredibly wonderful character, and the attraction to set the roof on fire. Although, I must admit that while it seemed to have everything it was still lacking the extra umph that would have made it spectacular.  Noah and Grace meet years prior when her freshman year English class’s project was to write Marines in Iraq or Afghanistan. Little did Grace know that her pen pal would be one of the many Marines that had no family or friends to give him that amazing experience of belonging. So, Grace became is one constant, and as the years passed the feelings between both of these character grew and transformed into something so much deeper. When Noah returns home, and feels as though he doesn’t belong he walks away from his constant forgetting what was truly important. This is where are story beginning. The delivery of the story mixes past and present in a very unique and creative way. Their story is told alternating characters of Noah and Grace with a few segways of letters in between. So after a long absence they are reunited, but unlike every before. Since these characters had never met face to face they are still having to process through the getting to know one another phase. When this happening readers will get to experience these segways that shed like to there past and the building of this relationship over the four years as well as now. This story carried SO MUCH POTENTIAL. I hate to say that I found it lacking and I want so much to over look it completely, but I have to be honest so there it is. I read that book two with book Noah’s friends, and let me just tell you that I am so excited about this. Even with the flaws this is one of those books that will have you hooked. You will read book two, and hope with everything in you that this was just the first book jitters and book two will ROCK YOUR WORLD. I am on the cliff hanging on by one finger waiting to continue this story.