ARC REVIEW – 99 DAYS by Katie Cotugno

99 Days 
by Katie Cotugno
Publisher – Balzer & Bray
Release Date – April 21st 2015
Buy – Amazon | Book Depository

Day 1: Julia Donnelly eggs my house my first night back in Star Lake, and that’s how I know everyone still remembers everything—how I destroyed my relationship with Patrick the night everything happened with his brother, Gabe. How I wrecked their whole family. Now I’m serving out my summer like a jail sentence: Just ninety-nine days till I can leave for college, and be done.

Day 4: A nasty note on my windshield makes it clear Julia isn’t finished. I’m expecting a fight when someone taps me on the shoulder, but it’s just Gabe, home from college and actually happy to see me. “For what it’s worth, Molly Barlow,” he says, “I’m really glad you’re back.”

Day 12: Gabe got me to come to this party, and I’m actually having fun. I think he’s about to kiss me—and that’s when I see Patrick. My Patrick, who’s supposed to be clear across the country. My Patrick, who’s never going to forgive me.

99 Days that’s how long the summer holidays last until Molly is returning to Boston in the fall. 99 Days to avoid her ex-boyfriend and his family. 99 Days that will turn out to be a whirlwind of emotions. Molly Barlow’s life turned upside down when her mum wrote about her sex life as the main character, Emily Green, in her best selling novel, Driftwood. Ever since then, she has be called all sort of things and so she moved to Bristol boarding school to hoard off the names and constant egging of her house. Now returning, for exactly 99 Days she hides until she can face the Donnelly’s and the two brothers that were a part of her life before Driftwood.

Molly Barlow, if I’m totally honest, she completely baffled me and I couldn’t see her reasoning with getting involved with the person or persons that has made her life, hell. It wasn’t her fault, and I didn’t really take kindly to her mum either, I mean why would she do that, I know she says you have to make a story out of everything, but really her daughter’s own sex life after confiding to her for a shoulder to cry on. That is pretty low. I felt quite pitiful towards Molly and I felt sorry for her. She has no friends, no one to really hang out with this summer, just her Netflix account and some Red Vines. Then enter stage left comes, Gabe and Patrick all at once. Gabe and Molly start seeing each, really getting to know each other as they are outcasts, after all it was sleeping with him that sparked the damn book. With Patrick, she wants to try and make amend, for him to listen.

During the summer, things take some drastic and steep turns in the novel, for once Molly was something good with her life with also being a PA at The Lodge, helping Penn, her boss, running again and starting to regain some of her old friends as well as some new, Imogen and Tess. She started to have a normal life. Things were going well with Gabe and she was starting to fall for him. Oh I loved Gabe, I can picture him with her, and he was always there for each other even after Patrick broke up with her before the book affair. They were outcasts and not by choice. They were indeed lovey-dovey and that’s how I like my relationships. Then Patrick starts to stick around more, and it gets a little weird for my liking. An intense affair starts to take both Patrick and Molly as if they want to continue where they left off.

Quite clearly it’s a love triangle, but for me it totally wasn’t. I was indeed Team Gabe as I genuinely loved him. But for Patrick, he became very strong and manipulative, hitting Molly at her weakest and fondest memories of their ex-relationship. He almost becomes dark with jealousy with her relationship with his brother. I hated Patrick and quite frankly I wanted to punch him one too for how he treated his friends and girlfriend ex or otherwise. I’m not typically a physical person, promise. Lol. It was during the middle that I hated him so much and Go really annoyed with Molly that I was like “c’mon, why are you doing this?!” She could stop this for goodness sake and poor Gabe too. The real reason took me by surprise which turned this novel right out of he park.

I was very slow during this book, but this book deserved so much more of my attention if I had done. The way it was styled and constructed was quite brilliant. It would have been a very fast paced novel. The ending was real, honest and perfect. It wasn’t a typical HEA, I thought that might happen the way I was feeling in the middle of the book. But I’m glad Katie didn’t do that. For me the ending really redeemed the book as a whole as the characters perspective of life especially with Molly. She is starting to learn from her mistakes and put the past behind her. It wasn’t a typical HEA, I thought that might happen the way I was feeling in the middle of the book.99 Days proved to be a total surprise to me. I know many other have enjoyed her previous novel, How to Love which I have yet to read.

Rating – 4