Review: Zero tension or suspense
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 11, 2014
I usually enjoy second-chance romances, but there were undertones to this book that I found extremely unrealistic and a bit unsettling.Carter and Elly meet on their first day of college and they are immediately attracted to each other.  The book begins with the story of their meeting and then flashes forward to nine years later.  Despite being best friends all throughout college and being attracted to each other, neither one of them ever made a move.  The only way Nuss can paper over this huge discrepancy is to skip their college years altogether.  It’s just so bizarre that they never expressed their feelings, despite feeling sure the other one was the person of their dreams or that their friends, who were aware of their feelings, never let anything slip.Carter leaves New York after college and the two don’t keep in touch, not even on Facebook (in fact, Carter doesn’t keep up with anyone from their circle of friends, not even infrequently over the internet).  He’s so convinced that Elly is the one for them that he gets an Elly-themed tattoo (creeper!), but he doesn’t even friend her?  He becomes the CEO of an oil company and, in his spare time, gets a Ph.D in English (!!!!!).  When a job opens up at NYC, someone just happens to call him to offer him the job (this delightfully rosy take on the job prospects of a recent humanities Ph.D with no in-person teaching experience was fanciful, to say the least).So, now Carter’s back in New York, just in time to reconnect with Elly (whose career also has a suspiciously elevated arc, as she has her own psychology clinic at a time in her life when she likely would have just completed her studies).  The tension in the story is fatally undercut by the author’s decision to alternate each chapter between the POVs of the two mains.  We never get a chance for any suspense, tension, or doubt to develop because they’re constantly declaring how much they care about each other and are ready to spend the rest of their lives together.  There is a brief wrinkle later in the plot, but nothing can stand in the way of this love story that was pretty much complete the first moment these two set eyes on each other.Mild spoiler alert:  If my boyfriend of a few months, on hearing that I needed major surgery, declared that he needed those parts to make babies, I would dump him immediately.  It boggles the mind that we’re supposed to think this is sweet or charming.  I would have told him to get out of the office immediately.