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    The Next Forever
    The Next Forever
    The Next Forever
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    The Next Forever

    By Lisa Burstein

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Next Forever by Lisa Burstein. A new adult novella from Entangled's Embrace imprint...
    **Recommended for ages 17+ due to sexual content and language, mature subject matter**

    One night in college can change everything…

    Away at college, Amy just wants one night alone without her high school sweetheart, Joe. So when he invites her to go to the library, she heads off on her own instead. How she ended up at a house party with the mysterious bad-boy Trevor is another story…

    Joe so isn't going to the library. He needs space from Amy, too, so he's decided to rush a fraternity, to get back the swagger he had in high school. But it doesn't take long for the brothers to invite him to the real rush—where the beer is flowing and one particular girl has set her eyes on Joe.

    Over the course of one wild night, both Amy and Joe will have to decide if their futures belong with two new people, or whether the next forever will have their first loves in it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJan 14, 2013
    ISBN9781622660032
    The Next Forever

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    Reviews for The Next Forever

    3.5/5

    14 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This book was a very quick read. It depicts a real argument that lots of people in college have with themselves. I enjoyed it and its realism.
    • 1/5
      I actually really enjoyed Pretty Amy, the story of a girl heavily lacking self-confidence who ends up making some really bad choices to fit in. I mean, who didn't do some stupid things in high school in order to feel like they belonged? This novella picks up with Amy and her boyfriend, Joe, now in college. Honestly, I'm torn on this novella, mostly because I think it's very much aimed at pleasing the stereotypical new adult audience. Like, yes, I loved Easy, but most of the NA books anger me just from reading the blurb.

      On the one hand, I definitely think it's awesome getting to check in with those characters now that they're in college. They get together at the end of Pretty Amy, so now we can see what their relationship is actually like. They've grown pretty codependent in college, and they're both suffocating a little. Joe even asks her to get a place with him, which panics Amy and, honestly, himself.

      I really like that, much as he was depicted as Mr. Perfect in Pretty Amy, the reader can see that things aren't perfect in their relationship, that, if they want to make it last, they'll have to work some things out. Amy and Joe still suffer from temptation, and staying together is a choice. Being in love doesn't make everything easy or guarantee that you'll only be attracted to one another for all of time.

      On the other hand, the way this is shown irritated me a lot. Freaked out by Joe's question, Amy decides to attend a party with a hot bad boy to see whether she'll cheat or not, basically to test her devotion to Joe. Meanwhile, Joe told her he would be studying in the library, but instead went to rush a frat, keeping it a secret because of Amy's disgust for the Greek system. At the party, he is, of course, confronted with big-boobed bimbos willing to get it on with any dude in pre-law, because they're digging for future gold. Basically, everything they do in this book makes me despise characters that I liked and sympathized with previously.

      The Next Forever is well-written; I just don't happen to like most of what it says. Those who like new adult more than I do will surely love this novella addition to Amy's story.

    Book preview

    The Next Forever - Lisa Burstein

    TNF_1600.jpg

    Table of Contents

    Dedication

    Chapter One

    Chapter Two

    Chapter Three

    Chapter Four

    Chapter Five

    Chapter Six

    Chapter Seven

    Chapter Eight

    Sneak Peek of Dear Cassie

    About the Author

    If you loved The Next Forever...

    Sneaking Candy

    Also by Lisa Burstein

    Pretty Amy

    Dear Cassie

    Discover more New Adult titles from Entangled…

    Ruined

    The Mean Girl Apologies

    Full Measures

    Forged by Fate

    Darkside Sun

    Trouble Comes Knocking

    How We Lived

    One night in college can change everything…

    Away at college, Amy just wants one night alone without her high school sweetheart, Joe. So when he invites her to go to the library, she heads off on her own instead. How she ended up at a house party with the mysterious bad-boy Trevor is another story…

    Joe so isn’t going to the library. He needs space from Amy, too, so he’s decided to rush a fraternity, to get back the swagger he had in high school. But it doesn’t take long for the brothers to invite him to the real rush—where the beer is flowing and one particular girl has set her eyes on Joe.

    Over the course of one wild night, both Amy and Joe will have to decide if their futures belong with two new people, or whether the next forever will have their first loves in it.

    The Next Forever

    Lisa Burstein

    This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

    Copyright © 2013 by Lisa Burstein. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

    Entangled Publishing, LLC

    2614 South Timberline Road

    Suite 109

    Fort Collins, CO 80525

    Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

    Embrace is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

    Edited by Stacy Abrams

    Cover design by Jessica Cantor

    ISBN 978-1-62266-003-2

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    First Edition January 2013

    To my editor Stacy Cantor Abrams, for more reasons than I can list.

    Chapter One

    Amy

    So is that a yes or a no? Joe asked, a smile struggling to come to his lips—sunshine fighting through heavy gray clouds. He had just asked me to move in with him starting fall semester. I should have smacked my dining hall tray from the table and climbed across it to kiss him like we were on a plane going down, but all I could do was stare at my tray and run the tines of my fork over my uneaten mashed potatoes.

    Part of me did want to reach for him, but something else was keeping me in my seat, playing with my stupid mashed potatoes like a child.

    Sure, I said, because I was afraid to say anything else. I didn’t want to hurt him, and what I really wanted to say, I don’t know, would have.

    He sighed so hard it could have blown me over. He didn’t believe me. He knew me too well to believe me.

    We’re back to this, Joe said.

    What? I asked, trying to pretend I didn’t know what he was talking about.

    Joe shook his head. You’re doing it again.

    It.

    The thing that had made him write me off our sophomore year in high school. The thing that got me arrested—as in, might go to jail—two years later.

    Amy, he said, his hazel eyes glued on my tray as he assumed I was ignoring him. But I wasn’t. I was pausing him, pausing myself. Trying to keep us in the perfect place we had been before we got to college.

    When he was my hero and I was a girl who needed one.

    When I knew he was real, true, and mine.

    He still was, obviously, but now when I thought about us, my head felt like the mushed-up mashed potatoes on my plate.

    He took a bite of his burger, a few crumbs from the bun falling on his navy blue polo. A month ago, I might have wiped them away. A week ago, I might have.

    Now, I watched them pile up like snowflakes. Now, I wondered if anyone else in the dining hall would tell him. I wondered why I didn’t bother to tell him.

    Maybe because now we were more than friends, it also meant we were less. As the friends we used to be, I would have been able to talk to Joe about the guy in my life who had unexpectedly asked me to move in with him. But now that he was that guy in my life, I was too afraid to.

    Joe put his burger on the plate and put his hand on mine, stopping the design I was making in my mashed potatoes: four perfect lines, over and over again on top of one another, till they weren’t perfect anymore.

    It’s okay, he said. We can talk about it later. Forget I asked. His hand was there, blanketed on top of mine, just like it had been the first time we kissed. The first time I knew he was the only one I could count on. I let myself feel the pause. Be the girl who needed rescuing, even if I wasn’t sure I was anymore.

    We were at college an hour away from our small suburb of Collinsville, New York. The town we grew up in, the town SUNY Geneseo was supposed to let us leave behind, but with Joe sitting across from me at every meal, standing next to me at every party, walking with me to most classes and sleeping in my bed every night, it was hard to leave Collinsville behind.

    It made me wonder if I really wanted to.

    And now he’d asked me to move in with him. If I said yes, no matter how much I wanted to be able to, there was no going back. This was a problem, because I already felt myself wanting to turn into the girl I used to be. The girl he was talking to when he said, You’re doing it again.

    Maybe that girl would always be there.

    I picked up his hand and kissed it, sealing that time and space. Making it a place I could return to and remember if things between us got bad, like I feared they might.

    I went back to my mashed potatoes, determined to flatten them, to cover every inch of my plate with them.

    Are you mad? he asked. Joe knew that even though I had just kissed him, there was something else there. I couldn’t hide from him, just like he couldn’t hide from me.

    His hands started to shake as he waited for my answer. He gripped the table, trying to make them stop. They weren’t shaking because he was upset. That was just what they did. That was his thing he might never be able to leave behind.

    I watched him, his eyes looking through me the way they could because he’d known me for so long, as close to forever as I could count. No, I said, staring at his eyelashes, enviably long.

    Are you happy? he asked, assuming that if I wasn’t angry I must be happy. Even-tempered Joe, the Joe I loved. The Joe I wished I could crawl into a glass bottle with like a boat, so we could spend forever corked off from everyone.

    Everyone—especially the boy who seemed determined to smash that bottle to pieces. Trevor.

    I looked past Joe’s head, his brown hair that always reminded me of the shelves in a pantry, a color that makes you feel comfortable and full. I let the sound of the dining hall fill my ears. Trevor sat alone at his table, strumming on a black electric guitar and making notes on a pad.

    Trevor’s blond hair fell in his face and he pushed his bangs back, showing off a wrist covered with leather cuffs.

    I felt my mouth open, like I was trying to talk to Trevor in the same way he was trying

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