Playing Through Every Choices Book, In Order (Part 27: The Freshman 1)

Hey! Today, we start our college experience at Hartfeld University as a freshman! I'm sure all our roomates will be completely lovely, non-annoying people!

Next time, we continue our freshman year, except this time, it's winter.

Link to previous reviews: https://www.reddit.com/user/stresseatingdog/comments/sj3s3m/all_choices_reviews_megapost/

SPOILER WARNING, AS ALWAYS!

The Freshman, Book 1

M/C: Stella

Final LI: Chris

Favorite Chapter: Chapter 2

Favorite Character(s): Zack, Brandon, Becca, Madison, Darren, Logan

Least Favorite Character(s): James, Leila, Professor Vasquez

Overall Rating: 3/10

Review:

Here it is, one of the three OG Choices books, and the series with the most books in the app aside from The Royal Romance. Unfortunately, I don’t think this series holds up all too well, compared to The Crown and The Flame or Most Wanted. This book in particular just rubs me the wrong way. Let me get the obvious genderlocking complaint out of the way first. I’m honestly inclined to be a little nicer to this series, considering that it was one of the first series on the app, and that Kaitlyn is a canonical lesbian, making un-genderlocking this book much more difficult than, say, Bloodbound. However, that doesn’t mean I’m completely alright with genderlocking, it’s just that there’s a miniscule justification for it here. Moving on, another issue I have is with the characters, and how utterly detestable the majority of them are. All 3 main LI’s have moments where I wanted to bitch slap them (Kaitlyn’s non-consensual kiss attempt, Chris’s pathetic excuse of not wanting to hurt me being the reason he goes and starts banging Becca, and James acting as though we’re in a committed relationship and getting mad at me for not even kissing Kaitlyn, even though I never so much as flirted with him previously). Abbie and Tyler are tolerable in this book, but from posts I've seen in this subreddit, they apparantly will get a whole lot worse. Professor Vasquez is such a fucking prick, omg. I’m not gonna magically start feeling bad for him because he has cancer, when he’s such a massive asshole to you throughout the entire first book. God, it says something when I like the intended antagonist, Becca, better than half of the characters designed to be “friends” for M/C. I feel so bad for M/C, because everyone is so wrapped up in their own asses that they neglect to care about her problems, such as the fact that she literally has to work for a shithole of a boss just to afford her tuition!