Published: September 22, 2008
Publisher: Grove Creek Publishing
Pages: 236
Overall Rating: 4.5/5
One girl. Two guys. Who says three's a crowd? When Mandy takes an unusual summer job-in construction-she has to prove she's just one of the guys. But she gets more than she bargains for being the only girl on the job. The mixture of hot guys, sunscreen, raw wood and testosterone proves to be an elixir she can't protect her heart from. Brooding Boston and flirty AJ find themselves looking at Mandy as more than just a girl who holds a hammer. Mandy soon finds herself not only lost in a whirlwind of a male-dominated world, but also the center of an inadvertently "constructed" love triangle. Mandy must choose between two guys who want her heart. But what's a girl to do when she wants them both
Jennifer Laurens does it again! But this time, I have a few things I didn't like about it. Shocked? Me too, a little bit.
Let's start with the cover. I don't like it. I don't know why I don't like it, I just don't. However, it is better than the old cover for the book, if anyone has seen that one. I think it's just her facial expression...it throws me off.
I despise the name Mandy. (Sorry, if your name is Mandy :/ ) I'll tell you why I hate it. My name is Amanda. Growing up, kids and teachers, and sometimes family, assumed I was okay with being called Mandy. I wasn't, and yet every year, I had to tell at least one teacher that I did not want to be called Mandy. I had to actually get snippy with some friends, because I did not want to be called Mandy. My name isn't Mandy....it's Amanda. That's bad enough. Too common. Bleh. Anyways, me hating the name of the protag isn't going to drop my rating of the book, but I felt I had to voice that.
The book opened with Mandy's first day on the job. This is one thing I love about Laurens' books. You open it, and the story starts. You don't get a whole lot of back story, and you don't get bored. While a lot of detail works for some novels, most of the time I just want to skip all of that.
Aside from her name, I didn't care too much for Mandy. She had her redeeming qualities, but most of the time I just felt like she was extremely naive. She was naive when it came to a lot of things, but mostly AJ. I did not like him. I thought he was a sleezeball, to be honest. I'm pretty sure he was actually a decent guy, but his "baby-doll" habit made my skin crawl. Then there was Boston, whom I found myself rooting for from the very beginning. There was something about the way he was so determined, and not shallow like the other guys. (And I don't mean shallow as in character depth, I mean shallow as in....Oh, lookie, Megan Fox *drool*) While AJ was drawn to Mandy by the way she looked, Boston was just drawn to her. I also loved Cam, Mandy's best friend, and I wish we had gotten to see at least a little more of him.
I loved the fact that Mandy wanted to build houses. She genuinely wanted to be there, which was great. She was not your typical teenage girl. Not to mention, it was a great setting for the book.
All dislikes aside, I loved the story. The way Laurens writes moves the story along beautifully, and before you realize it, you've finished the book. I'm not going to lie, I felt butterflies FOR Mandy, on more than occasion.
(I don't think I'll review Magic Hands by Jennifer Laurens, when I read it. Because if I love it as much as her other books, I don't want to say so. I'm getting sick of my own fangirlyness, haha.)
Cover
2/5
Plot
5/5
Characters
4/5
Pace
5/5
Ending
5/5
Writing Style
5/5
