I received this book in exchange for an honest review.Books like Almost Eighteen get under my skin. The story material is good. It's ripe. Gretchen (the author) can go places with it. Who doesn't love the illicit teacher-student relationship in the grey area of "it's only four years", "he's just a student teacher"...etc etc... I actually am a teacher so the bad part of this "illicit relationship" for a reader like me, is that I actually don't like it. I spent most of the book arguing with both Wilson and Max. I guess it would have made more sense to me or felt more real if the author had SLOWED down and really developed the relationship. We're kind of thrown into Wilson's narrative, and preaching about life and death, and then BAM! Here's this teacher I love and want to kiss and take his last name. Then the miraculous happens, her uber rich roommate who she actually doesn't like, invited her on vacation and who else does she run into, but Professor Hottie...and on it goes.Due to the lack of romantic and character buildup, I wasn't able to connect with either Wilson or Max. They both seemed immature for such a relationship all the while attempting emotional maturity. Because of this, their story was unable to blur the lines in such a way where I as a reader was okay with the morals of the relationship. I don't feel like Max fought against his feelings hard enough or knew enough about her to feel so deeply. Again, this is due to a lack of character buildup for the reader. There is also Wilson who has an amazing back story, but I ended up not liking her because her inner dialogue came off as holier than thou and stereotypical angsty teen. I was actually more drawn to the secondary characters which says a lot about the lack of emotional connection I had to the primary characters.This book, like so many, had the potential of a beautifully developed love story, but it wasn't developed enough to make me believe it. Lots of fluffy romance and silly in love girlish thoughts, I must also say it's got some really cool quotes that make the time spent reading the book worth it.Despite the cliffhanger ending I don't think I'll be reading the next book, I've got just enough of Wilson and Max, they're cute but I'm not up to read more books of them. I was hoping for a more exciting way of describing the danger that involves a relationship between a teacher and his student, Wilson is stupid-ish and Max is kind of too caring, I would've loved him fighting his demons and trying to resist to the fact of being drawn to her, he's lame-ish.
