Review: Better than a Three Star, but not a Four Star
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 23, 2014
If there was an option for a three and a half star rating, that's what I would give this book.  I'm not comfortable with rounding up to a four star, so three it is.I really wanted to like this book more than I did.  The concept - a marriage of convenience - is hardly a new one, but I was excited to read the author's take on this plot thread.  I expected a breezy, fun read and I got that in parts.As an aside, I think the book would benefit from undergoing another pass through with editing.  There were minor errors both grammatically and formatting wise that were littered throughout.  I'm not basing my rating on those, as I didn't find them distracting enough to warrant ridicule, but still feel like they should be addressed.  My rating is based solely on the storyline.I found the main character, Kelsey, to be annoying at times.  The fact that she has a less than optimistic outlook on marriage and relationships was very heavy-handed.  Each time her love interest, Jared, would do something nice for her, she immediately discounted it.  Yes, her mother had been through a string of husbands and her father was non-existent throughout her life, but that doesn't automatically mean that the whole institution of marriage is a sham.  It was tiring to hear Kelsey explain away Jared's actions as stemming from nothing but ulterior motives every single time.  On each instance when her outlook on relationships could have been changing, she went right back to the same old song and dance.  With a pessimistic attitude like that, it's no wonder why all of her previous relationships failed.As important of characters as Amy and Doug were, I don't feel as though their point of view was needed here.  The book is about Kelsey and Jared, and it felt disjointed when the author suddenly shifted gears and got into either Amy or Doug's head.  It didn't happen much, but when it did it was unsettling.  A better alternative would be to give them their own story.  Four points of view in one book is a little too many.Being contemporary romance, I was a little surprised to see a couple of words used over and over when describing the characters.  Specifically, "swain" and "hip".  The author doesn't give away specifics on how old these characters are, but context clues put them somewhere in their late twenties or early thirties.  People in that age range don't use those words.  I'm older than these characters, and those words even sounded dated to me.  The opposite also came into play during a scene when Amy and Kelsey discussed "doing the nasty".  Suddenly, we've gone from being poetic or stuck in the 1980s to being in eighth grade.  Minor things, yes, but they still made me shake my head.I did like Jared as a romantic hero, though of course he was a millionaire and he could fly aircraft.  Seriously, his personality alone would have been enough to categorize him as swoon worthy.  I was really pulling for him to win Kelsey's heart and for them to declare their love for one another.  And thankfully, he did end up calling her out on her preconceived notions of relationships, but it was quite late in the game.This book started out slow for me, but it did pick up.  Once things got moving, I found myself eager to finish it in order to see how we'd come to the happy ending.  And there is a happy ending for all four characters, though I would have liked to have seen an epilogue instead of the rather abrupt ending.All in all, it was an enjoyable book and I would consider reading others by this author.