Review: Liked the title
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 30, 2013
Sex and Key Lime Pie had a good title so I thought I'd give it a try.This is the story of Cheyanne and Luc, childhood friends who became lovers.The story was a little convoluted when it came to figuring out the relationship between all the characters. Cheyanne was good friends with Luc's sister, Isabelle. However it comes out throughout the story that Isabelle is in fact a half-sister. They had the same mother, different fathers. Unfortunately they kept referencing each other as brother/sister instead of putting the half in there and the relationship between all their parents sort of came out throughout the story. If I read correctly Luc's father, Harlan, had an affair with his mother which resulted in his being born but they were never in a committed relationship or married. His father did seem to recognize him as the biological son but they never got along. The mother did marry a man - was his name Roy? - a drunk who fathered Isabelle. At some point Cheyanne's mother marries Harlan though by the time the story starts Harlan has died and Cheyanne's mother has remarried. And don't get me started on Luc's cousin Miguel and another family tree. So all these characters with some history or another was difficult to keep track of. It might have been a little easier if the half-sister/half-brother was referenced correctly.Cheyanne has a fling with Luc when she's 18 and he's about 9 years older. Harlan dies and leaves everything to Cheyanne. Luc flies into a rage and nasty words are exchanged and she leaves town, later marrying a French man and goes to Europe. 9 years later she returns to town to take care of packing up the mansion which has been sold and scheduled for demolition. The story was written very much like old time Harlequin romances where the man and woman are constantly fighting and at each other's throats but by the end of the novel they figure out how much they love each other and live happily ever after. Throw in a secret child. Classic romance formula from 20+ years ago.The storyline was good, it was a pleasant enough read, but it was really hard to like Luc's character, he was so nasty to Cheyanne. I might have given the book 5* but the proofreader and line editor get failing grades. At times it was really hard to follow the dialogue and know who was speaking. Sometimes this could have been fixed by putting the next person's dialogue onto the next line instead of crammed all in the same paragraph. How did the proofreader miss so many instances? Here's an example:"You need to go to the hospital. I'll close up." "No. It's almost lunch time," Isabelle said. "Screw the lunch crowd. You need a doctor, and I'm taking you." His tone left no room for argument. "I'll take over in the kitchen," Cheyanne offered. "We can't ask that of you," Isabelle choked out. "You didn't ask. I volunteered. Now go."That's 3 people having a conversation and its all in one paragraph.Every chapter has similar examples except in most cases it was only 2 people talking and somewhat easier to figure out. Also chapter breaks took place in odd spots, not on a new page. As long as you can get by that the book is a decent read, especially good for a beach holiday read.