(Review) Perfect Opposite - Zoya Tessi

Title: Perfect Opposite
Author: Zoya Tessi
Format: finished copy, epub
Genre: New Adult (Contemporary, Romance)
Pages: 263 pages
Date Published: January 1, 2014
Amazon 

Summary (from Goodreads)

Their wishes were simple and modest. Fate had other things in store though, and she can be a real bitch sometimes.

All he wanted was to get the job done and somehow to endure those long months playing nanny to a spoiled little rich girl. Without strangling her with his bare hands in the process. Well, it is going to be much easier said than done.

- All she wanted was to escape the past and live like any other nineteen-year-old girl. Her plan definitely didn’t include the arrogant, tattooed savage, with his awful mohawk hair and lack of social graces, whose only mission was to stick real close and mess up her life.

But, people aren't always what they seem to be, are they?

Review: 

I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review.

The moment I read through the first chapter I had my doubts whether I would like the story or not. Sasha came off as a little brat to me at first, but that was before I really understood the gravity of her situation. At a young age, Sasha has been exposed to the dark underbelly of the arms and weapons world all thanks to his father who happens to be a big arms dealer. Let's not even go to the reason why she gets panic attacks during thunderstorms. After learning of this, I really started to get attached to her. I can only imagine how difficult it was to just desperately get away from it all and still try to keep as much sanity and normality as possible. 

Then in comes Alex, an enigmatic personality who was tasked to be Sasha's bodyguard/nanny after some complications with her father's job happened. At this point, i thought "Wow this would be incredibly cliche if they started to hate each other to the bone" and then I realized, so what if it was cliche? If I was enjoying what was left of my freedom one day and then all of a sudden my absentee father tells me I have to walk around with a stranger, i'd be fuming mad too. 

Overall, the story had it's ups and downs but I thoroughly enjoyed the story so much I overlooked and forgot so many things that I wanted to nitpick. It had everything a good chick lit had. I loved the humor, especially the match of wits between Sasha and Alex. Some of their matches had me in fits! It had the appropriate amount of drama and romance to really reel you in to the story.

One thing I cannot overlook though is the somewhat broken moral compass that Sasha seems to have when it came to dating. For some reason, it was easier for her to forgive what Alex has done but cannot even give Tyler a break? Cheating of course is completely unforgivable and perhaps it's more on the line of Tyler's approach towards the issue but I figured lying about your identity and hiding out for months and making people think you are dead is also up on the scale of "unforgivable" things. I guess in the end, Sasha really did love Alex. Love makes you do things you never expected of yourself. I really love the anecdotes the characters express in the story. It gave them more depth and personality, another dimension to them rather than just two dimensional characters. 

Another thing is that as much as I loved the world-building, I couldn't tell where the story is set. Other than that, I really loved the story. It's a fun, romantic read to dip your feet into and I will definitely be looking forward to reading more from Zoya Tessi. 

Rating: ♚♚♚♚♚