Review: 3.5 stars
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 2, 2011
Cat Grant's Once a Marine needs to be broken down into two parts for this review: What Worked and What Didn't Work.First up, What Worked: the characterizations. As with her previous books, Ms. Grant's characters are realistic, flawed and fully developed. I especially was drawn to former Marine Cole Hammond and his back-story. (He served five tours in Iraq and was discharged for violating DADT and was now suffering from PSTD.) Cole was a character, even if you've never served in the military, a reader could identify with. His struggles resonated with me long after I put the book down. Secondly, I enjoyed the progression of his relationship with Marc and how the two men fall in love. Their relationship is the core of the story and made sense. I liked how the ups-and-downs of living with another person are explored and the hard times are not glossed over.Now we get to What Didn't Work (for me): the POV switches. Marc's POV was first person. I thought this connected the reader to Marc and his inner thoughts well, but when paired with a third person POV from Cole, the book then became disjointed when reading. Plus the ratio of first person to third person wasn't equal and kept throwing me out of the story. I was not sure why the drastic change of POVs was used in this novel, because it distracted me as a reader just when the drama was unfolding.Another thing that that didn't work was the climax of the story. I don't want to give away too much, but the resolution was too easily achieved. Up until that point I liked the realism in the book, but the ending felt rushed, not keeping in tone with the rest of the novel.So, as you can see from my review, I have mixed feelings about Once a Marine. On one hand, I enjoyed the book; but on the other, there were issues that kept the book from being a truly great read.Dark Divas Reviews