Review: Technically Decent Writing, But Story Needs More...Something
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 11, 2012
I have to admit to being a bit perplexed about how to rate this book. On the one hand, it was fairly good writing and it should have been a good story. On the other hand, as I was reading it, I kept feeling like something was missing. The book centers around a 28-year-old woman, Jada Rowley, who had had a crush on her best friend's brother when she was 16 and he was 22. She's recently been dumped by her fiance who felt that she was emotionally distant during their 8 year relationship. The problem was that I felt sort of the same emotional detachment from the story. It was hard to relate to a character who thought herself in love at 16 and is still pining after the same guy (who she only ever shared one kiss with) for 12 years.The male lead in the story, Liam, was a bit confusing to me. Jada has kept track of him over the years because she's seen him in all these magazines and has seen/read interviews with him and whatnot. He's supposed to be kind of famous, but I can't say that I've ever seen where advertising creative directors get their names and pictures splashed all over the papers all the time. Thus, every time there was mention of his fame, I was pulled out of the story to wonder, "what the heck?" Liam, too, is emotionally distant in relationships, and between the two of them, I didn't feel like I saw this relationship develop enough to call it a true romance. The author also resorted to a lot of cliches in her descriptions of him (particularly during the one sex scene) that made him seem more weird to me than attractive.One other thing that I noticed with this story was that, while told in third person, it's entirely from Jada's perspective, and I would have liked to have some of Liam's thoughts so that I could believe that the attraction was mutual (and so that I could understand it at all). I think I'd probably give this author another chance in the future, but this isn't a story that I could recommend or that I would ever want to reread.