Review: SUCH a Disappointment
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 22, 2014
This book had a ton of great reviews and I've heard great things about this author before. I really had high hopes for this book. Instead of loving the characters and devouring the story as quickly as possible, I was extremely disappointed.Riley was a perfectly okay heroine. She was a bit young and naive. This annoyed me at times, but based on her age, I didn't think it was actually that far off the mark. She didn't really seem to be actually working on the journalism thing at all. It was mentioned a handful of times, but it was mostly used as a hollow plot device in order to get Riley into the gym.And then we have Hudson. He's extremely immature. His back-and-forth about his feelings for Riley was understandable--for the first 200 pages. When he is younger, his reactions are completely justified. As he gets older, however, his reactions stay exactly the same, but no longer justifiable. Also, when he decides that he can't live without Riley and he's going to give in, there's no real reason. It just happens and the flimsy reason that he provides is just dumb.The fact that sin kept coming up over and over, and yet the characters were not faithful or religious in any way really annoyed me. Hudson, especially, was so focused on it just didn't seem part of his character. I understood the guilt and unhappiness based on the events that had occurred, but the obsession with sin just didn't seem right.The secondary characters weren't anything to write home about. The guys at the gym barely have personalities, other than most of them being a-holes. Even Eden, Hudson's sister and Riley's BFF, is boring. Normally, I'd hope the secondary characters are entertaining enough to earn their own books in the future, but definitely not in this case. I couldn't care less.I really liked the concept of this book. The plot idea itself was really great. But the execution was so badly done. I'm highly disappointed in this book and I don't think I'll be reading much--if any--of this author in the future.