Review: don't bother
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 09 2, 2013
J.D. (aka Jack or Jacqueline) has always done what her wealthy parents have wanted, including agreeing to marry her soon-to-be husband. The only thing she has ever done for herself is give her heart to Mike, a hot, professional ice hockey player of whom her parents do not approve. Will she stay with her stuck up fiancé, Phil? Will she go to her best friend, Mike? Or is there another option? J.D. must finally find herself to learn what she really wants to do with her life and with whom she wants to share it.The heroine begins this story as a rude, fake, stuck up bitch. And, I have to say, she doesn't really change until the end of the book. That would have been okay--I have read other books where the heroine was a total bitch but she was strong and clever and amusing, so it worked. Here, I tried to find her funny or sympathetic but she was just a high-maintenance snob and a mercurial nut job the whole way through. Furthermore, when she DOES make a decision and seem to really have turned a corner, her resolve is EASILY dissolved by parental and peer pressure. It's confusing and frustrating.Even her love for Mike is so weird...They've been friends since they were kids. They both knew they loved one another. And he's a professional hockey player so he has a ton of money. WHY WHY WHY were they not together? She is 28 when the book begins. And yet, she STILL does exactly what her father says? She could have gone off to Mike at any time and it wouldn't matter if her father disowned her. There is smarminess and infidelity and misery all around her and she sees it clearly, is repulsed by it, but still tries to be a part of it, even though she has a valid alternative life just waiting for her.The fact that J.D. and Mike weren't together from page one made absolutely no sense. It wasn't like they didn't know each other's feelings--they'd even had sex in the past! And it was great! Totally illogical! It just struck an untrue note from the very beginning of the book.Then, she and Mike TRY to get together and fail, or miss each other--again and again... There's a lot of red herrings too: will they get together? Does she love someone else? She even makes a date to meet someone else later--why? If she's in love with Mike, why would she do that? It makes her being with Mike suspect, like she was just letting fate decide instead of making a REAL CHOICE. AGAIN.Her thoughts were annoying to read but as the narrator, she was inescapable. Nothing that happened was surprising but the way the reader is driven there is frustratingly obvious and abrupt. The plot twists lacked any subtlety--like  a yo-yo, the reader is thrown down in one direction and then yanked back up in another, over and over again.The whole thing is like a bad Novela but without the train wreck aspect to hold the reader's interest.****Oh and there's a LOT of cheating. A LOT. Seriously. So if that bugs you, stop right here and find another book.****The more I read this book, the more I hated it. And the wrapped up ending felt inauthentic and too pat to be at all believable. Plus the few sex scenes seemed rushed and repetitive. My lack of caring for either the hero or heroine, by that time, made these scenes seem awkward and more clinical than erotic.In addition, for a book with a main character who is a pro hockey player, there is a decided LACK of actual HOCKEY SCENES in it. I think there's only one, really, and it lasts about 5 seconds. Some mention about fans or media attention, but mostly the fame is not seen at all "on screen." It's as if the hero (and half the side characters) are just regular guys who HAPPEN to play hockey but it doesn't really affect the story in any way.One last thing: I grew up in NY so I know this world but it is clear the author does not. This kind of money does not live in New Jersey. Not that there isn't a lot of wealth in New Jersey, there is. But it's not THESE people. It seemed like whatever background research the author may have done was all cobbled together from bits of primetime TV shows. The whole vibe seemed off and overdone, too in-your-face, which COULD be New Jersey. But once again, it's not THESE people in this story. In the NY tri-state area, J.D.'s family and friends would have houses in Manhattan, Westchester, the Hamptons or parts of CT--possibly all of those locations. Definitely there would be houses elsewhere in the country (Newport, Palm Beach, etc) as well as in foreign countries but none of them would be in Jersey. Maybe most people wouldnt care about this but it bugged me. Sorry.Most books, I'm sad when I've finished the epilogue, wishing there were even a few pages more.Here, I was just glad to delete it from my iPad.Good riddance.Would have been 1 star but it didn't have the typos and ridiculous grammatical errors so many books possess these days. So I gave it 2 stars--for editing, really.