Review: Not happy at all.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 02 9, 2014
I look at all of the 4 and 5 star reviews, heck, even the 3 stars, and I wonder, "Did I somehow end up with a version that had the good story taken out and replaced with a bad one?" Because I read a lot, and there was nothing 4 or 5 star here.First off, it does mention that Lawrence, or Larry, teaches at Cambridge, which is in England, so I should have not been caught off guard by the different language and terms. But I just finished a book a week ago that took place in England as well, but it was much easier to understand than this one was. I found myself wishing for a glossary of terms that a reader could keep going back to. What really bothered me was that Al wasn't just a little slow, he wasn't even just thick as a brick, he was thick as a stack of cinder blocks. Why was that the problem? Because the entire story is told from his point of view, so if there's something he doesn't understand, then it's just left that way, especially if he a) becomes too distracted in general to ask, or b) becomes too distracted by sex to ask. And there were times in the book where I was rolling my eyes and thinking, "why on earth would they make a character like this? He couldn't catch a clue with a fishing net!"  Having at least some of the book told from Larry's POV might've been helpful.As I've stated in a number of my reviews, I have read books this short, and shorter, before, and they were very well done. This was not. It was so dull and dry, I can't recall how many times I stopped and moved onto something else: TV, music, laundry, another book. You get the point. I had to force myself to finish. Even the sex was only so-so. And no matter how many times love was mentioned, I didn't feel any of it. Seemed more like a relationship of convenience, like 2 lonely people who just wanted to be with SOMEBODY. I didn't even like ANY of the characters. Nope, not happy at all.