Addicted to You (ADDICTED SERIES): Ritchie, Krista, Ritchie, Becca: 9780593549476: Amazon.com: Books

I typically post my reviews to another site, but I feel I had to do one for Amazon. Let me preface this and say that this book/series had been on my TBR since 2013. Then I proceeded to take a screenshot of the book cover when an ad on Facebook popped up. If that’s not a sign, then I don’t know what is.I’ll introduce the two main characters and then get on to my review of this book. The two primary main characters of this book are Lily and Lo. They’re childhood best friends, fake dating, roommates…oh and they’re addicts. Lily is a $ex addict and Lo is an alcoholic. This book is all told in Lily’s POV and you see how much her addiction consumes her. But the big premise to her addiction (you don’t find out until later on in the series…yes, I’ve read the whole series; Addicted & Calloway Sisters) and why she turned to $ex is eventually explained. If you’re wanting to give up on this series after one book, that’s like giving up on a TV show after one episode has aired and you eventually watch more episodes and fall in love with the characters and the storylines. That’s what this series is like.Addicts are enablers, liars, and manipulators of the truth. They isolate themselves from others that can’t possibly know what they’re dealing with. This is exactly what Lily and Lo are. They enabled each other’s addictions while trying to keep each other safe, they lied to family, and they manipulated the truth to those that cared about them. Lily and Lo isolated themselves, because they didn’t know how long they could go without their vice if they were to do so.Now on to my review. I gave this book 3 stars. Solely because I didn’t always love being in Lily’s head and me as a reader expected to get Lo’s POV as well. This book is about two addicts trying to navigate a world where people (their families) expect them to show up more than they already have on top of making sure their fake relationship keeps up with the charade. I like to not judge other reviews by saying how repetitive everything was. Which, I agree and that it was. And had I read and absorbed those reviews I wouldn’t have taken a chance on this series. But that’s addict speak. It’s an endless cycle of the same thing 24/7 and if you think they can snap their fingers and no longer be addicted to the thing that’s been a constant, then you’re in for a rude awakening. Some of Lily’s inner dialogue was exceptionally painful to read. Especially when her addiction took center stage when she was at an event for her sister. From then, that’s when the cards start to fall around her and Lo. The only way she could feel, and essentially numb the pain, was with sex. It wasn’t easy to see how much they depended on one another.This book focuses on addiction and how that addiction can interfere and ruin relationships. Now I won’t say that Lily’s addiction gets fully resolved, but over time it does get manageable. To anyone wanting to read this book, keep an open mind. I tell everyone that this series as a whole (intermixed with the Calloway Sisters) is so amazing. The journey that Lily and Lo go on as addicts gets told in a painfully beautiful way.

3.5 stars -- Wow. I'm still trying to process what I just read. While reading this, I think I realized that I don't tend to read a lot of super angsty books. And this is not angsty in like a bad way...huh, so this just spurred me on to look up angsty in the dictionary, and I'm not sure I mean that word. It's just that this book deals with a lot of real and sometimes very negative emotions, and our two main characters are ridiculously self-destructive. So it makes it hard to read for me. I'm a fairly sensitive reader, and so my heart just cringed for these characters over and over again.And there just wasn't a balance of lightheartedness to compensate for the heaviness...which don't get me wrong, I definitely wasn't expecting any lighthearted moments in this book (I wasn't confused about what I was getting into). I mean, objectively there were some (Connor providing a lot of it), but I think I was stuck in horrified mode and it wasn't enough to get me out of that place. It's more that I realized something about myself as a reader, and that I tend to gravitate more towards books that have a balance of the two (heavy and light), does that make sense? And so there's a part of me that really enjoyed this book and all the issues it tackled...and there's another part of me that's just emotionally exhausted. So I find myself desperately wanting to read book 2 and find out what happens with Lily and Lo, and there's another part of me that's more cautious of the emotional strain I'd be subjecting myself to.And so I guess that brings me to what this book does well (much to my dismay): the authors do an amazing job of portraying characters struggling with addiction. Or at least to me it felt very authentic. And it broke my heart. B/C you could see glimmers of who Lily and Lo were beneath it all, but for the most part they were just smothered by their addictions. I can't even honestly decide how I feel about their romance, b/c it was so hard to see their love beyond how they were enabling each other. It really wasn't much of a love story...at least not yet. It's not that you didn't see that they cared for each other, but they both genuinely loved their addictions more and always put those above each other.I actually wasn't sure how I would feel about following a character with a sex addiction, b/c it's not something that we as a society focus on as something real. I wondered if the authors would just use that as an excuse to have a really racy book, but it wasn't that AT ALL. And so I really applaud them for that. I could believe it. And I hated it. I hated how it controlled Lily. :(I feel like I honestly didn't get a great feel for Lo. Maybe it's because the story was told from Lily's POV, so we were able to get inside her head? Maybe it's because addiction twists characters, and so we end up seeing so many different sides of him (including some mean sides)? I don't know. I wonder if the rest of the series is all from Lily's POV, b/c I would love to see into Lo's head so badly.I thoroughly enjoyed the side characters in this book. I have a feeling the more I learn, the more I'm going to want to read all nine books, including the sister spin-offs... Maybe they'll be a bit more reprieving in the emotional distraught-ness area.Other than that this book is a bit outside my wheelhouse and left me a bit scarred, I also felt like it dragged on a bit at times, and so that was where that extra half star loss falls. Also, I'm not sure how I feel about how things went with Lo's father and Lily's thoughts about him at the end (how's that for vague and not spoilery). But I've decided I'm definitely going to give the next book (Ricochet) a try and decide how much my heart can take from there, and see how I'm feeling at that point.

Addicted to You by Krista and Becca Ritchie is a gripping contemporary romance that tackles themes of addiction, love, and self-discovery. The story centers on Lily Calloway, a sex addict, and Loren Hale, an alcoholic, who have been best friends since childhood. To hide their addictions from their wealthy families, they pretend to be in a relationship. However, their fake relationship becomes more complicated as real emotions come into play.The novel stands out for its raw and honest portrayal of addiction and its impact on relationships. Lily and Loren’s journey is both heartbreaking and hopeful as they struggle with their dependencies while trying to support each other. Their love is deep but flawed, highlighting the challenges of a codependent relationship.With well-developed characters and emotional depth, Addicted to You captures the complexity of human emotions and relationships. It’s an intense, thought-provoking read that doesn’t shy away from difficult topics. As the start of the Addicted series, it sets the stage for an intricate and heartfelt story about growth, recovery, and unconditional love. Fans of character-driven romances with serious themes will find this book hard to put down.