Review: Strong start but disappointing reading experience overall
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 06 29, 2013
I thought the first part of this story was excellent.  I was very excited because the writing and editing was very strong and the story felt like it was shaping up to be really good.*** on a side note, how sad is it that I have to point out that the editing was strong?  Such is the state of the books that seem to proliferate these days***Anyway, I was very optimistic and thought I had turned a corner on what had so far been a pretty dismal year in IR reads.But, alas, my excitement was a little too soon.The length of the story works against it abysmally.Morgan Reed is a bookstore owner who dreams about far away places.  Finally, she bites the bullet and goes on a fabulous 7-day secluded tropical island vacation to relax, unwind and just gt away from the cold and bustle of Philadelphia.While there she is literally knocked off her feet by super bowl MVP quarterback Seth Blake.  Mortified that he knocked her down Seth sets out to make her enjoy her vacation.This part was fun.  As meet-cutes go it was perfectly constructed for this couple.But then the story begins to fall apart.  Morgan and Seth "jokingly" get married (why? this is never really explained).  Seth discovers that they were really married after until Morgan has already left the island to go back home.Seth has to follow her to let her know their sham marriage is real.So yeah, as a plot this could have been fun and cute. But like I said, the author gave no reason why on earth Seth and Morgan would joke marry.  They'd only really known each other for a couple of days.By the time the story reconvenes in Philadelphia is pretty much falls apart.  There is no real development of their relationship.  There is no connective tissue between scenes to make the story cohesive.  And there is no explanation or real exploration of why on earth these two people would fall in love with each other. They didn't express outrage or argue about the fact that their marriage was real.  There were a couple of odd scenes that felt dropped in and others that felt like they were included for storytelling expediency to help the couple sprint to the HEA finish line in the end.  And even the editing started to suffer a bit toward the end where there were a couple of word usage errors.Too bad.  I  would love to see what this author could so with a full length, fully developed storyline.  But as it is, after the promising beginning this book ends up being a disappointment.