Series:  Perfect Chemistry
Author: Simone Elkeles [website] [twitter] [facebook]
Genre:  Contemporary, Urban, Romance
Publisher: Walker and Company
Format: 1 Paperback, 1 eBook, 1 Hardcover
Source: 2 Purchased & 1 Publisher
Parental Advisory: language, drugs, alcohol, murder, gangs, sex
Teachable Moments: peer pressure, gang culture, gun control, loyalty, independence, pregnancy

Book Names:
1 – Perfect Chemistry [Indie Bound] [Amazon]
2 – Rules of Attraction [Indie Bound] [Amazon]
3 – Chain Reaction [Indie Bound] [Amazon]

Plot:
<spoilers!  spoilers!  spoilers!  Because I’m reviewing multiple books at the same time you may become aware of certain pieces of information.  Beware!>

The Fuentes brothers lost their father to gang violence at a young age.  This left Alex the man of the house and protector of his grieving mother and two younger brothers (Carlos and Luis).  Living in a tough section of the Chicago suburbs it was difficult not to get drawn into a life of gangs, crime and violence.  But still, there was no shortage of love.

Book one, Perfect Chemistry, centers around Alex the oldest of the Fuentes boys.  He is doing his best to stay in high school long enough to graduate so he can at least attempt to create the potential for a better future.  The problem is that he’s having a slight problem getting around the requirement of leading the life of a Latino Blood.  The Blood’s are a prominent gang in his neighborhood; a gang who’s presence is and participation in is unavoidable.  Particularly given the fact that his father was a member as well. That makes Alex particularly interesting to the gang.  Enter Britney, the blonde haired popular cute girl from the right side of the tracks.  She comes from a good family, has a safe and relatively happy home, gets good grades and just generally leads the perfect life.  Or so Alex thinks.  What he fails to realize is that it’s all a facade.  Though her life is not nearly as complicated or dangerous as his own she has burdens to bare.  Anywho, as you can imagine these two never run in the same circles and, in fact, often times find themselves butting heads.  Neither particularly likes the other for a variety of reasons.  Until one day, they are paired on a school chemistry project that requires them to spend time together outside of school.  As one would imagine, the more time they spend with each other the more they learn about the other’s lives.  Voila….romance.  But wait, there is conflict and violence and angst!  This is not an easy relationship to navigate for either of them, but in the end….well, in the end you’ll see what happens.

Book two, Rules of Attraction, focuses on Carlos the middle brother. The story is somewhat similar to Perfect Chemistry in that Carlos is trying his best to maintain distance from the Latino Bloods.  Now living in Colorado with Alex after his mother ships him back from Mexico (where he was loosely affiliated with a local gang) Carlos starts high school off by turning on his bad boy charm.  This, naturally gets him in trouble and he very quickly finds himself on the wrong side of the law.  As a result Carlos is moved out of Alex’s house and into the home of one of his brother’s college professors.  Enter Kiara, the daughter of the professor and the girl Carlos doesn’t want to let himself open up to.  She is nothing like any of the spicier girls he’s attached himself to before — she’s academically inclined, always trying to do good and see the positive in people, she takes responsibility for herself and her actions and isn’t afraid to admit her shortcomings.  Guess what?  Romance ensues!  But wait, there is conflict and violence and angst!  You know what this means, right?  The road to relationship bliss is rocky and difficult for both of them to navigate but in the end….well, in the end you’ll see what happens.

The last of the series, Chain Reaction, focuses on the youngest Fuentes Luis.  Having always been the “good” brother, the one who did well in school and was always on the straight and narrow, it is interesting to see that Luis is now the danger junkie and ladies man of the family.  Living in Colorado with his mother after moving back from Mexico to be near Alex and Carlos, he finds himself relocated again a couple of years later.  This time he’s back in the Chicago suburbs where the Feuntes family planted their roots.  This, naturally, means that he’ll be the focus of the local chapter of the Latino Blood.  If for no other reason than Alex’s previous departure, though that isn’t the only reason why.  There is a much larger reason, a secret that was alluded to in the first book of the series.  So, the good boy gone bad is closer to the gang life than ever before.  Even so, this book wouldn’t be an Elkeles creation if it didn’t have romance in the air.  You see, in Colorado Luis was always surrounded by girls falling at his feet it stands to reason that when he lands back home in Chicago his senior year of high school he’s overcome by the rarity of encountering a girl that’s just not into him. Enter Nikki, a badass in her own right.  She’s a girl who’s not at all interested in gang bangers and isn’t afraid to let the boys who she feels fall into that category know she’s off limits.  It is clear from the start that she is going to keep her distance from Luis no matter how much charm and swagger he throws in her direction.  Coming full circle back to Perfect Chemistry, Luis and Nikki meet a curmudgeonly chemistry teacher who ingratiates herself into their lives in an attempt to better them both.  You know what’s coming right?  Yup, you guessed it….romance! But wait, there is conflict and violence and angst!  Their relationship actually seems to be the most difficult of the three, but in the end….well, in the end you’ll see what happens.

Characters:

Alex felt old beyond his years, which makes sense to me given his childhood and the level of responsibility he was required to take on as a result of his father’s death.  Being the protector didn’t afford him the opportunity to find himself as much as take on the persona of his father.  He was only able to show true emotion and vulnerability when spending time with Britney and even then he was quite guarded.  Though rough around the edges he was charismatic in the cocky kind of way that makes you want to peel away the layers to see the truly genuine heart that is underneath.

Britney should have been the typical girl next door.  The popular girl with the jock boyfriend who becomes homecoming and prom queen.  She’s happy and easy going and smart.  But not street smart.  She thinks she knows about gangs and the people who are in them but she’s really quite naive about their motivations and circumstances.  Moreover, they are equally naive about hers.  Underneath her sparkling exterior Britney is a bit of a tortured soul.  She’s a girl who has taken on the responsibility of taking care of her disabled sister.  She’s a parent in ways her own parents can’t be.  Dedicated, strong and more similar to Alex than she realizes.  They both hold family close and in the highest regard even to their own detriment.  It’s one of the things that draws them together.

Carlos, well he’s the cocky bastard of the group.  Definitely full of himself he thinks his poopie doesn’t smell!  But….his attitude is well earned.  He’s not had an easy life.  Being the middle child has made him the direct focus of his brother Alex but also disregarded (at times) by his mother.  He has an air of loneliness and desperation to him which makes him more human.  His actions tend to be spontaneous and without much consideration to future outcomes.  He feels deeply for the people in his life but acts stupidly on their behalf or in reaction to what he perceives as their slighting behavior of him.  He’s rash but sexy and filled with the kind of rough around the edges charm that makes girls want to fix him.

Kiara is possibly my favorite character of the entire series.  Such a genuinely nice and caring person she is always putting everyone in her life before herself.  She is a wholesome girl who is entirely genuine in the expression of her thoughts and feelings.  Her goals are to be successful in life and love and make the lives of the people around her better.  Though cautious with her feelings she can’t help but reach out to Luis against her better judgement which only makes me like her more.  She knows she’s setting herself up to fail or get deeply hurt (or both) and still she makes the effort.

Luis is by far my favorite Fuentes.  He puts Carlos’ cockiness to shame by notching it up to narcissism.  But I can tell you it’s not unappealing.  It’s actually quite endearing.  He’s so obviously trying to cover up what he perceives as inadequacy — feelings and vulnerability — with brash and sass.  He says and does anything he can to deflect the growing attachment and affection he feels for Kiara.  He’s distrustful and cautious but deep down faithful and filled with the kind of integrity that makes anyone want to stand by him.

Nikki was actually my least favorite character.  Mainly because she was set up to be this brash tough girl but really never achieved that goal.  She definitely had back bone, she had no problem verbalizing her opinions and feelings, but I didn’t see her as the match for Luis in the fearless and cocky department that I was expecting.  Now, having said that I still liked her a great deal.  I liked that she had a good full heart and that she loved on such a grand scale.  Despite being so close minded about love when she put herself on the line she did it full force and without much trepidation when it eventually happened for her.  I do think she felt a tad bit more judgmental than the other girls but that could be because she was the girlfriend that followed Kiara.  Comparatively speaking she was likely closer in attitude to Britney so had this story been the second as opposed to the third I may have felt differently.

I felt like the secondary characters in all books were a bit ordinary.  I suspect that was by design since the main focus was on the brothers and their girls.  In each of the different books the parents were exactly what you would have expected.  Each parent had a protectiveness of their child and then as varied circumstances applied there was shirking of responsibility, materialism, judgement, friendship and understanding.  The evil foe in every book were gang members, in a couple of cases the same gang members, so there was no shortage of hostility, violent tendencies, domineering and control issues.  There were best friends and classmates that allowed for story progression and character development in ways that the romantic entanglements wouldn’t necessarily have facilitated.  All in all the characters in each book fit their role and served their purpose well.

Setting:
From the Midwest to the heat of Mexico this series did well to show the disparity in The Fuentes lifestyle versus the girls in their lives.  The Fuentes family have always lived in a small home.  In Chicago it was a house where all three brothers had to share a room.  The women in their lives, on the other hand, all lived in much more posh circumstances.  I will say, that the scene was set with a minimalist vibe.  I got the dark, grungy, downtrodden feeling from the Fuentes locations (their house, the garage where Alex worked, the warehouses and such) and I got the lighter more comfortable feeling from the larger upscale homes of the girls.  There was also the variety of high school locations like hallways, classrooms, parking lots and the like.  Not much to any of that really.  BUT I’ll say that in these books it wasn’t really about the location anyway.  There wasn’t as much focus on the intricacies of the where because it was all about the who and the what.  This worked really well for it.

Final Thoughts:
The common themes of these stories left the series feeling a bit repetitive and at times (particularly in books two and three) predictable.  Each had a central focus on both gang culture and the romantic entanglement of the bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks falling in love with the good girl from the right side.  Having said that each story had it’s own particular strength that allowed for just the right amount of differentiation to make it feel fresh and compelling enough to keep me coming back for more.

In fact, I would say this is one of my favorite contemporary series and that rests solely on the shoulders of the Fuentes brothers.  One of the things I liked best was that these brothers rarely compete against each other.  They had genuine bonds of love and respect.  Sure they fought, they disagreed vehemently even, but they also had mutual respect and were careful to protect each other at all costs.  There were flashes of sibling rivalry but it was never full blown.   To that end my absolute favorite part of Chain Reaction was that it contained the most interaction between the Fuentes brothers.  They spent a great deal of time together and it was so much fun to see how they related to each other and how dear their family was.  It was such a great addition to the usual love story the books have built their foundation on.

But let’s face facts.  These books are also about romance.  The Fuentes brothers are H-O-Double T HOT and they definitely don’t shirk the responsibility of bringing the sexytimes. There is plenty of passion, seduction, and surprisingly tenderness between the brothers and their girls.  There is a sweetness to the stories and in all three cases a bit of angst.  But that’s what makes it great right?  It can’t be too easy or else it would be boring!

I really enjoyed seeing the different characters and their interpersonal relationships develop through the different stories.  Not everything was romantically based.  There were friendships, mentorships and parental relationships that had great impact and influence over each of the boys.  I also really enjoyed that Elkeles included an epilogue for each book in which she showed the brother of the book in the future.  A great way to tie up the book and give me a feeling of completion and satisfaction.  Also, I quite liked that the story from the previous book trickled into the next.  Not in big ways just how a family infuses itself into all of the lives of it’s members.  You see small things and know where people are but it’s not full blown.  Elkeles did an awesome job of that.

In case you can’t tell, I enjoyed this series and would encourage you to read it.  It’s good contemporary that spans age and gender.  I liked the romance factor and the plot was gritty enough to keep me on the edge of my seat every now and again.  There is definitely something for everyone!