The Love interest by Cale Dietrich

Summary from Goodreads:

There is a secret organization that cultivates teenage spies. The agents are called Love Interests because getting close to people destined for great power means getting valuable secrets.

Caden is a Nice: the boy next door, sculpted to physical perfection. Dylan is a Bad: the brooding, dark-souled guy who is dangerously handsome. The girl they are competing for is important to the organization, and each boy will pursue her. Will she choose the Nice or the Bad?

Both Caden and Dylan are living in the outside world for the first time. They are well-trained and at the top of their games. They have to be—whoever the girl doesn’t choose will die.

What the boys don’t expect are feelings that are outside of their training. Feelings that could kill them both.

Review:

I’m kind of terrible because I seriously don’t even remember requesting this from the publisher, but I totally did. And they sent it to me in exchange for an honest review. Also, unlike everyone else who read that summary, I had no idea this was a LGBT friendly book. I thought it would be both spies falling for the girl. I was pleasantly surprised when the two male spies fell for each other.

I guess I was overall pleasantly surprised. I was kind of expecting the stereotypical YA love triangle story, with some fun spy stuff throw in. And what I got instead was something that almost made fun of the typical YA love triangle and poked fun at its own genre, with some fun spy stuff thrown in.

I loved the comment from the main character about thinking its ridiculous that someone would find their soul mate in high school, and then I loved the comment back at him about needing to read a YA novel. So, yeah, this happens in a YA a lot, and I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book that both commented on it and made fun of it at the same time. I loved this. I loved that the girl had to choose between two such extremes and I can even understand why the spy organization set that up. I would find it extraordinarily flattering and confidence boosting if a scenario like this presented itself to me.  I also don’t think it’s too unbelievable that it couldn’t be done. I can see organizations wanting to set up love interests for similar purposes.

I also loved that the two guys ended up falling for each other. I’m not spoiling this because apparently other reviewers picked this up from the summary…I was surprised, which doesn’t happen that often. And I have to admit that this aspect kept me interested. I’m not sure I would have been as invested in the story if the main character fell for the girl.

On the other side of things, I felt like there were some plot holes to the story. I found the whole love interest idea to be plausible, but I did not find all things about the spy organization to be quite as believable as the concept was. For instance the chip (that gets taken out?), the amount of love interests in one school, the killer robots, and the speediness and kind of rushed way everything resolved at the end all seemed too much.

I honestly feel like the book would have been so much better with a less happy ending. I feel like a less happy ending would have been more believable for me. I’m not saying one of my favorite characters should have died or anything. I just don’t think absolutely everything should have been resolved. Also, I could have dealt without the killer robots.

All in all though, this was fun and better than expected. I love books that can make fun of themselves. I also super loved the LGBT love triangle. I loved the concept for the story. I just didn’t love the follow-through/ending. I give this a 7.5/10.