same last names

I picked up my October 2012 issue of Marie Claire today and flipped to a random page and saw this article about a woman falling in love with an inmate named Damien Echols.

Wow! What a small world we live in. I wonder if he's at all related to Jennifer Echols. I'm now reading her Going Too Far book. I am hooked on her for the moment. It's so trashy reading, but I can't help it. YA will do that to you.

Endless Summer by Jennifer Echols

I finished this book last weekend. Turns out the second book is a sequel to the first. It was very easy to follow for that reason. However, I did not appreciate the parts when we get inside Adam's head. I liked that the first one was inside Lori's head and stayed that way throughout. This one flipped back and forth, alternating between her thoughts and his. I guess in the end it was helpful to see what he was thinking as well, but it was kind of distracting. I did LOVE how she listens to Kelly Clarkson and all the pop artists like a regular teenybopper like I do. In all my years reading YA I have not come across a charater like that yet, so it was refreshing. Though the guys kept listening to Nickelback and I really wonder how realistic that is. I'm glad that Lori and Adam were able to end up together in the end, but I kind of find it not believable that his parents would just give up on sending him to military school altogether. These two books also lost the feel of some really big plot. It was mostly girl drama of whether the two main leads would get to be together or not, so the overall story was kind of dry. I did appreciate that this one was a lot less sexual than Echols' other books, so it was more age-appropriate. I'm not sure, but it has an older feel to it and I would not be surprised if this was one of her earlier works. I do have to say though, she does have a knack of getting you hooked because no matter how bad the story goes, I can't wait to read another one of her books as soon as I return the current one to the library.