Review: Liked the MC, but Romance Fell Flat
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 15, 2014
3.5 starsI'm so conflicted about rating and reviewing this book. If I had to give the overall story and the main character, Sophia, a rating I would give both of them a 4-star rating. Like many I am a big fan of the home improvement shows on HGTV so I loved that Sophia was a young designer who's recently received her big break in television. I also really fell for Sophia's back story. While she's an up-and-coming, fancy interior designer now, when she was a child she and her mother were forced to live in a homeless shelter after her alcoholic father kicked them out. The project that she's working on for the TV show is the shelter where she grew up, which has now fallen into disrepair. All of that was really strong.Then there were some not so great things. The douche-bag producer of the show, Carl, bothered me because he seemed like such a terrible human being, but also because he was just so cheesy. And there are also these production notes, from the director, at the beginning of each chapter. It wasn't uninteresting to hear what was going on from the director's POV, but they felt unnecessary and I wasn't a fan of the weird foreshadowing (which I figured out pretty early on) that was included in the notes.But the weakest part of the story was the romance and that's kind of what this is supposed to be. I mean, it's a "red-hot read." The concept of the designer and the carpenter on a home improvement show getting together is great, but the execution just wasn't there. Sophia and the carpenter, Fynn (that spelling!), have a love/hate relationship going on which leads to some steamy scenes, but I never understood the attraction. There were surprisingly few scenes with Sophie and Fynn together and when they are together there's sexual tension, but I didn't get any connection beyond that. Which would be ok if it was a book with the girl and guy casually hooking up, but that wasn't what was going on here. Plus, Nailed probably has the fewest sex scenes of any of the Red-Hot Reads I've read.Bottom Line: I enjoyed the set up for the story and liked the main character immensely, but the romance and sex scenes fell flat for me. I'd like to give this a higher rating, but when it comes down to it this is a book that should be focused on romance and sex and that's where it was lacking.I received an electronic review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley (thank you!). All opinions are my own.