Review: It has so much potential! I'm dying inside about it.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 20, 2013
This book was so well written. I was impressed, in fact. The descriptions, the setting, the characterizations were so spot on and shown without too much telling. I applaud the author for her fine words. I loved the way each character spoke: Julia more urban, Brad more rural. It seemed to fit well, if not a little too formal. I was gearing up for a nice romantic read.Although I ended up having a couple of problems. But here's a quick gist of the characters.Julia McCarthy is a out of work actress living in Chicago who just happened to find success writing a blog called The Good Life about her time spent at her grandparents farm in Harmony Grove. The blog became a hit and she was offered her own show based on her blog, a Martha Stewart meets Rachael Ray type of program. The only problem is that they want to film in Harmony Grove, the town she based her blog on, but no one from Harmony Grove knows that she has or blog are successful. She basically lied on her blog that she had a husband and child and worked a farm. But to her defense, she used the blog as an outlet for her acting career and didn't expect to get caught up in this grand lie.Brad Taylor is ex-military and hardworking man who works on Julia's grandparents' farm. He likes the simple things in life and keeps to himself. He really wants to stay in Harmony Grove and make a life on the farm. Julia's grandparents, Guy and Trudy, are pseudo parents to him and he has trusted dog name Goose. When he hears of Julia's plan to film on the farm; he's very skeptical of her motives and if she's as genuine as her blog makes her out to be.I really was getting into the plot of this story because it's near and dear to my heart: city girl/country boy fall in love with a little chaos ensuing. But I kept getting tripped up on the too formal dialogue and the older sounding narrative of thirtysomething characters. It almost felt like this story was set in a different time frame and not present day. In fact without the whole blog and tv thing, I think this story would have worked well set in say the 50s or 60s. Now granted, the whole book didn't sound this way, it was relaxed at times and flowed well. But when the sex scene came between Julia and Brad I was like this...WHAAAA?Super effing confused because this was a romance, right? Now it's an steamy, hot he-licked-her-wet-folds erotica. The sex scene, while fine to some, didn't fit into the story in my eyes. It stuck out like a sore thumb. The whole book was romance and to throw in a detailed love scene was a bit jarring even though it was hot. I did say it was hot, right? It was really hot. Like damn...this woman needs to write more sex scenes.All that aside, I have to tell you why I gave this only three lip bites. I think this book was very underdeveloped. Like she could use a developmental editor (like me!). I wanted to get into more of Julia's backstory: her parents rocky marriage, her stays at her grandparents house, her life in Chicago, her acting, more of her dreams and goals. With Brad, I wanted to know more about his time in the military, his PTSD, his relationship with his sister and parents--it seemed stilted like there was past problems. What about his niece, she's in the story but only once. What was the purpose of having her if you don't really do anything her character?Also it wasn't touched on much that Julia and Brad were in love with each other as kids, or in heavy like or whatever you want to call it. I would have loved to hear them talk about it more, share feelings more, share memories. Give it more substance to the budding love affair.Also when Madi said that Brad felt guilty for kissing Julia because of her fake husband, I REALLY wanted to see more into that. That, like many other things, vanished.And then all the stuff with the filming of the pilot seemed put on the backburner. The whole reason she was there--the lies she told-- were so easily forgiven by Brad as well. He figured out she was a sham, pretty much, and was like no biggie, let's kiss. It's like he was so mad at her for the whole book and after he found out she wasn't married, all forgiven.After that point it was wrapped in a pretty bow and labeled HEA.I wanted more. I felt the author could have given us more and didn't and I'm left scratching my head why. This plot and these characters have so much potential, it seems wasted that Ms. Kirsch didn't delve into it more.Sigh.