REVIEW: Bitter Sweet Love - R.C. Stephens

**Disclaimer: I received this book via Xpresso Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. Any thoughts and opinions are my own.**

BOOK DETAILS:

Bitter Sweet Love by R.C. Stephens 
(Twisted Series #1) 
Publication date: January 18th 2015
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance

Synopsis: 
After enduring an abusive childhood and having her heart broken by the only boy she trusts, Alexis White vows to never let anyone hurt her again. She’s left her troubled past behind and starts a new life at college. For the past seven years, her social calendar has been filled with frat parties, drinking, and meaningless sexual hook-ups. Until one night she unexpectedly gets saved by a tall, dark, and handsome French foreigner, Luc Blanchard. He’s charming, sophisticated, and very interested in Lexi, who has presented herself as a challenge when she tells him relationships aren’t her thing.

She finds herself sucked in by his own intriguing past. But everything changes when Dylan Priestley, the gorgeous boy who broke her heart and shattered her faith in friendship and love, suddenly shows up in her life again while back home on a visit. Dylan doesn’t hide his feelings for Lexi, but she can’t forgive or forget being betrayed by the one person she ever truly loved.

Despite the pain Dylan’s caused her, Lexi is once again drawn to the blue-eyed-boy-next-door. Will Lexi choose the man who seems perfect but hides a dark side or the boy who smashed her heart into pieces so many years ago?
Review: 
I wanted to like this book. I really, really wanted to but it just didn't happen. The synopsis made me a little wary but I thought I'd give it a chance and I wish I hadn't. 
I'm okay with love triangles. They make a lot of stories worth reading because it's a mystery of  "Will they? Won't they?". I'm okay with characters who have traumatic pasts doing things because of their fear of the past repeating itself. I'm not okay with a young woman using someone breaking her heart as an excuse to party and hook up with every man who looks her way. I am not okay at all with this kind of dangerous behavior being acceptable because some boy in her past broke her heart. It's been seven years since she's been in a relationship. SEVEN years is a long time to still be blaming someone else for your poor judgment and bad behavior. 
I guess it's the mother in me coming out but I am really disappointed in the amount of books I see these days where this kind of stuff is the "norm" and gets rave reviews. What about teaching a young woman how to deal with heartbreak in more positive way? What about teaching a young woman to take responsibility for her own actions instead of laying the blame on some guy who didn't even really do something that terrible? Why is it okay for a young woman to blame a guy for SEVEN years worth of risky behavior? 
I didn't even finish this book. I hated it that much. I give it zero stars. With a society that promotes promiscuity in every media outlet that it can, without teaching young adults to be safe, we NEED more books, authors, etc., who write better characters. Life imitates art. Look at all the young women who are just hooking up with whoever they can wherever they can because some guy broke their heart or upset them or whatever other excuse they can come up with. 
Lexi's character has no self-respect because of the abuse she suffered and because she felt rejected by some man. And what changes all of that? Who rescues her from her hard-partying ways? Another man! (Insert eye roll here) Can we not have strong female characters who decide that they're going to be independent and love THEMSELVES and just be strong women? I just really hated that this is how that character was written. I felt like I was reading a Lindsay Lohan diary entry. It was just awful and disappointing.