Review: Butterfly Porcupine (Aintree Tales Book 1)

Butterfly Porcupine (Aintree Tales #1)
Author: Susan Fancis
Publisher: Self Published?
Release Date: March 14, 2011
Genre: YA Contemporary Romance
Source: Sent to me from the other through Goodreads
Summary from Goodreads:
Kai is an extravert. He likes making friends and hangs out with the close-knit group of teenagers who live in Aintree Court, West London, most of whom have grown up together and attend Aintree High School. At the end of the school term Kai's summer was all planned out: party, date the hottest girl around, play football, play basketball and pursue his hobby, taking pictures with his camera. He lands a job working for a professional photographer, and gets to spend the last weekend of summer at the Reading Music Festival.

Life is good. That is, until a new arrival to Aintree moves into the house across from his....

If Tasha could pick a superpower, she wouldn't have to think about it. It would be invisibility. Tasha is not a people person. At the end of term she leaves her old school, her mother and her friends behind and moves to Aintree to live with her estranged father, his second wife and their son, Marc. Tasha’s summer was all planned out too: settle in her new home, bond with her father’s family and (hopefully) keep a low profile. She soon discovers that not everyone in Aintree is thrilled to have her around.

Homesick and unable to fit in, life is not exactly great. That is, until she receives an unexpected, genuine offer of friendship… or is it?

My Thoughts:
First, I enjoyed the second half of this book much more than the first half. The first half was a bit hard to get through. There was a lot of information dumping, and I had a hard time connecting to Tasha. I realize that everyone had a hard time connecting to her and that she is one of those people who are hard to get to know. So I guess as that kind of character she was written pretty well. However, I just found her to be judgmental and annoying much of the time. I enjoyed reading about Kai and his group of friends much more. Honestly, I couldn't figure out why Kai kept trying with Tasha. This is one of those instances I guess where love really is blind. Luckily this book is written in alternating points of view so every other chapter was about Kai. Like I mentioned the second half of Butterfly Porcupine was much better and I found myself enjoying it at that point.

Also a pet peeve of mine is when an author writes a book and doesn't or rarely uses contractions. That is very distracting for me. I think with a bit more editing this book could have been quite a bit better. 

OK, I'm done complaining now. The overall story was pretty good. It follows a pretty classic romance formula and I enjoy those. I wish I could have given this book a higher rating, but I guess you can't love them all. With all of this being said I may read the next book if it is about some of the other characters that were in this book. Mostly because as I said the second half of this book got much better. I have high hopes that Francis' writing will just get better and better.