by Betsy (link)
Genre drama, romance
Pairings Isaac/OFC, Taylor/OFC, Zac/OFC
Length prologue and 37 chapters
Status Unfinished (with prequel)
The prologue of The Only Way is very mysterious. The boy speaking in it is never named, nor is his crime. From such a mysterious beginning, I can’t really see the connection to Little Jessica, Big Apple at all, but I hope it comes in time.
The first chapter goes back in time to somewhere a little less than a year after Little Jessica, Big Apple ended. It begins fairly innocently, but I can only assume it’s working up to the point where the prologue happens. For the first several chapters, though, the story is filled with all kinds of silliness referencing all those fun facts the teenybopper mags sold us. All of that is pretty annoying, I must admit. And when the real drama starts, it’s just as annoying in how overblown it is.
In addition to the overdramatics (mostly family and medical issues), there’s one big huge coincidence along the same lines as that in the first story — in fact, it reintroduces a character from Little Jessica, Big Apple. Otherwise, not much about that prequel is really important to The Only Way at all.
Although few of the various plot lines in The Only Way are handled with grace, most of them do start to come together near the point where Betsy stopped writing. One scene shows the prologue as a potentially prophetic dream of Zac’s. I have my own theory about what would have led to that dream becoming a reality, but the story never reached that point. I can only imagine how many more chapters and diversions into pointless drama it would have taken to reach that pivotal event. While the writing isn’t all bad, it isn’t all good, either. There are rapid point of view shifts and a handful of spelling and grammatical errors. There’s a good idea somewhere under all the story’s problems, though. Had The Only Way been finished, I might have enjoyed it a bit more.
Review by Bethany (website)