Review: Great Romance but VERY slow beginning
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 5, 2014
THE STORY:Although this is book #3 in the Coincidence series, it's more of a separate story as we follow the dual POV of Luke (Kayden best friend) and Violet (Callie's roommate). Luke's relationship with his mother is strained at best and we finally get to find out why, she's a drug addict and forced her son to help her shoot up when he was only a kid. As a result he's cold and has little care for anyone else's feelings.Violet has bounced around foster homes since the age of six, after her parents where murdered. She's afraid to trust or rely on anyone, believing that they will always let her down, just like everyone else has. But after a chance encounter with Violet, they strike up and odd friendship. They tease and bicker back and forth, but there is a light flirtatious vibe between them, and a unique understanding that they are more similar than they first thought.THE CHARACTERS:After meeting Luke in The Coincidence of Callie & Kayden, I was excited to read about his story. However I felt his character was very different in this book. Violet labels him as Mr Stoically Aloof, and that is the perfect description of how I originally felt about him. However this time, I actually found him to be a bit of an ass. He uses women and speaks about them like they are disposable. It's not until he starts to have feelings for Violet that we start to see some of that original warmth about his personality - but that warmth only extends to Violet. Also, having a descriptive sex scene with a random girl, where Luke treats her with no respect whatsoever didn't help with me liking his character.From the first two books in this series we are lead to believe that Violet is a cold, heartless 'slut', and she's more than happy for people to see her that way. However she's actually a scared and lonely girl, who hasn't had anyone to really care about her since she was 6. It took some time to warm up to Violet, but once I did I felt extremely sorry for the horrible things she went through. She's strong and very resilient, but struggles to let people get close - for understandable reasons.THE ROMANCE:I really enjoyed the teasing flirtatious banter between Luke & Violet. At first the insults where a defence mechanism to keep each other at arms length. But as they spent more time together it started to become more fun and seeing them make each other laugh, was beautiful, since it was such a rare thing for either of them. They both had such a great understanding of how they had dealt with their horrible childhoods, that it brought them closer together. Their romance was really well developed.THE WRITING:It took me a very long time to get into this story, and I think the main reason for this was the lack of character interaction and dialogue. The first 50% of the story is mostly made up of Luke & Violet's internal monologue, TELLING us about their feelings, when I would of preferred SEEING it. The MCs spend so much time telling us how tragic their lives are and how they struggle to forget their issues, it felt like they where on a constant pity party. With The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden, we got to see them struggling with everyday life, rather than them just telling us about it and I felt a lot more sympathy towards them. Unfortunately it took me till over half way through to start to feel compassion for Luke & Violet.I'm also coming to see a pattern in Sorensen's books, always having unfinished cliff hanger endings. Dramatic endings are all well and good when it fits the story, but doing it every time, suggests it's a tactic to force readers to come back for the sequel - and I'm not a fan of this.FINAL WORD:Despite a very slow beginning and my hatred towards unnecessary cliff hanger ending, I did enjoy the story. The romance was strong and I will be back for the sequel to see where their story leads.CONTENT:exuality: medium / sex scenes, some sexual abuseViolence: mild-medium / several fightsLanguage: medium / regular use of f wordDrugs & alcohol: strong / drug use/dealing, heavy drinking, smoking