Review: BookReviewBay(Dot)com - Review of Accept Me by J.L. Mac
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 21, 2014
I'm going to be brutally honest here... this is not what I was expecting at all. Nothing like the first two books... even the characters felt different. It was the strangest experience for me. Like I knew who was who and what went for what, but it felt more like an out-of-body experience where I was reading about them through someone else (& not the author's) eyes. It sounds crazy, I know... but I kept wondering if J.L. Mac actually wrote this book herself. My first thought when I got to 30% was 'hang on... is this the right book?' then once I'd checked to see I was indeed reading the correct book my thoughts went to confused. Utterly confused. Then shock.The first half of the book wasn't even focused around Damon and Jo much. It went around Grams and Noni (the lady who works at Jo's bookstore) and I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that this was all done up to make the book feel longer... which, BTW isn't saying much since the entire book took me 2 hours to read - shocking! It wasn't a full novel at all. In fact this book could really just have been added to Restore Me, ending this series at two instead of three books and call it a day. It wasn't worth an entire book on its own - that's how little is actually added here. There 147 pages that make up Accept Me is honestly just not worth a whole new book. Sad. But very true.What makes matters worse for me, is that I was a huge cheerleader of both Wreck Me & Restore Me. Again a series (or trilogy rather) ends in a manner that it just didn't need to. It felt half written, disjointed and honestly undeserving of a 5 star rating.We get very, very little of Damon and Jo together. Majority of the time they are apart. Most of the time the focus is on something other than their actual relationship and I'm hugely disappointed in the outcome of this book. Not only are they not together often - 40% of the book is about them actually being broken up. Damon's a real dick towards Jo and at the very end of the book it all tries to come back together but fails miserably! Damon spends about thirty pages ripping Jo apart and then one paragraph explaining his actions to her and trying to get her back. This doesn't work for me. Not at all. He kind of lost me as a fan at that point. Even his reasons for his behavior is silly. But Jo just sucks it all in a melts... back into his arms... Really? She wasn't the determined, spirited woman we meet in book one. She was someone else. Both of them were... Impostors!I'm not sure what the reason for the turn of event is but all I'm saying is that don't expect much of what you are probably expecting and don't hold your breathe to be blown away by this one. It's not gonna happen. Truth be told this book probably deserves less than a 4 star rating, but I'll give the score to the writing and overall effect that - when the going was good... it was pretty cool. But as a whole this tale doesn't deserve much more than maybe 3 stars for the uniqueness of the plot.  It's been done before. More than once and if I had even the slightest interest in doing so, I might actually be able to do some homework and name a handful of books that are exactly the same (plot wise) as this one was. But I couldn't really care to invest anymore time on Accept Me. Thank God it was only a 2 hour read in the first place or else we'd have bigger issues on our hands than me just being peeved at the end result.I guess I should have know since this book doesn't have a sexy couple on the front. I should of known.4 Stars for the writing style. Even though it was a sucky book overall - it was pleasant enough to actually read.3 Stars for the actual plot, storyline and turn of events that left me questioning if I actually read Wreck Me & Restore Me correctly.1 Star for the amount of steam present in this (as per the first two books) 'adult erotic type romance'!Overall Series Rating: I'll go with a 4 just because I had my heart ripped out when I got handed a poor, over-played and inconsistent conclusion for this series.