ELEMENTS OF CHEMISTRY SERIES by PENNY REID

“You’ll make me cry.”

“I wouldn’t.”

First off we have to say how much we love Penny Reid’s style of writing. It’s effortlessly funny, sweet, emotional and sexy. We got caught up in her story immediately and became gripped by her characters and their journey. This time Penny Reid gave us Geek Chic and we loved that!  We were lucky enough to sit down and plough through books one to three in her new series Elements of Chemistry and have decided to do a combined series review of Martin and Kaitlyn’s story in its entirety – as always spoiler free!
We’ve split the reviews up in case you want to read each review as it releases.

On the whole we loved this series as it made for addictive reading and it felt quite original in the sense that the characters seemed refreshingly different to what we’ve been reading as of late.

Attraction started with a bang and we were hooked! The humour was quirky and the geek speak was fabulous. The romance element was surprising and we fell in love with Martin and Katy and the way their relationship developed. Brilliant characters – the personalities at first glance were a case of opposites attract.

“Be the marriage girl. Don’t be the hook up girl. Don’t be her.”

We have sweet and innocent bookish Kaitlyn who has everything in life planned and organised to the extent of going through life pre-programmed – things black and white with no room for a grey area.  Then we have Martin; the bad-arse unobtainable hunk of the male species who just happens to be the star of Kaitlynn’s crush and also her chemistry lab partner. He’s got a brilliant mind and body with a filthy – rude controlling mouth. It was never going to work was it?

Then came Heat and wow; it was jam-packed! What a rollercoaster ride this was. We learnt so much as the characters developed and we saw more detailed sides of them as what lay beneath their facades was unearthed.

‘I was analytical – overly so- and I’d been using it as a way to supress passion.’

What we loved and was endearing about Kaitlyn in Attraction became a bit of an annoyance in Heat as it was exacerbated and at times came across a bit judgemental, immature and at times naïve.

“I’m not willing to settle for being with someone who sometimes treats me well. I’d rather be alone.”

Despite this we understood that her age here was a huge factor as was her upbringing and parental influences. As for Martin; we fell harder, yes there were a couple of hmmmm moments however we saw these as a resulting vulnerability and self-preservation of a sad past.

“You’re callous because you have to be. Because otherwise you’d be bleeding all the time.”

Overall our affection for him remained a constant. Heat has a lot of conflicting emotions and self-realisations. It has trust issues and negative outside influences as well as consequential actions which makes you want to dive right on into Capture.

“I’ll be there for you. I’ll be your safe place.”

Capture started brilliantly; we rejoiced in the apparent growth and it seemed as if things were now continuing on the right track as was set out originally in Attraction. The timespan between books is not very long however the characters seemed to have matured and are facing their issues head on – they’ve both woken up independent of anyone or anything else. These issues learnt from as a consequence of an emotionally heart-breaking journey.

“You’re all I think about, all I want, you are everything.”

Where Kaitlyn was the one who’s felt ‘old and set in her ways’ for her tender years throughout this series; it’s Martin who seemed to have aged tenfold in Capture. Our hearts hurt for him so bad and whilst we’ve been rooting for him all along this time it was even more so.

‘..the way he instinctively sought affection and warmth made me smile sadly. I’d forgotten how lost Martin was…’

We completely warmed to Kaitlyn again despite it being a bit dicey there for a while. Perhaps we felt her character was slightly ‘too much’ and where we were supposed to feel sorry for her she came across rather aloof and condescending. However, she won us over and all was good.

‘…I was on a new path, a path I loved. He woke me up, even if I was kicking and screaming the whole time, and even if I broke my heart in the process.’

We have to say that Capture ended this series in a great way.  A series that tried to be different and in many respects succeeded in just that. Being with two characters growing up in such a short space of time was quite a reading experience and we really enjoyed it. We laughed, swooned, despaired and sighed in equal measure throughout this romance.