Review: Brilliant idea, poor execution.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 09 14, 2011
My Take:The book opens introducing Thom and Dru in a cute scene about muffin making. You are quickly introduced to Thom's insecurities regarding the age difference between him and Dru. You are also quickly introduced to Kara, their neighbor and good friend.Skye is introduced by page six, and is debuted by page eighteen, so all the characters are ready to come out and play rather quickly. I do enjoy that. However, the reason Skye is coming to join this happy couple is not happy at all. He and Dru had been best friends (and Dru had a secret crush on him) when they were younger. That all changed when Skye's parents died when he was 17 and he was forced to live with a relative who held him captive and did awful things to him.To Dru, it was like his best friend abandoned him. To Skye, he was living a nightmare. When he escaped, he was sent to a home to deal with his issues (and he has a lot). Skye has no other family, and when he's set to be released, the only person he has to call is Dru.And therein lays the problem. Dru and Thom are committed to each other and then Skye, Dru's past crush, joins the party with a slew of emotional issues.The idea for this story is BRILLIANT! Brilliant, I say. There were a lot of curves and twists the author could have taken and played with. There were a lot of different ways she could have taken us from beginning to end. Lots of different layers to play with. I was excited to read it.But that's where my excitement ends.Instead of this story being character driven, it's plot driven, which in turn, makes a lot of the characters actions/emotions/etc seemed forced and faked. This is sad because this plot has the means to make a MEAN character driven story.Telling. Telling. Telling. This author told us everything instead of showing us. I mean everything. Since there is so much telling going on, the story is wordy. Unnecessarily so. This book could be tightened up substantially. I found myself skipping large sections so I didn't have to read about the play-by-play of dinner cooking.  And at the same time you are missing the opportunity to give the reader a true glimpse of the characters and their surroundings.And this author did something I have never seen done before. She actually referred to the characters as "the blond one", "the man", "the woman" "the younger man", "the dark brown haired one". It was off putting. Why not just say the character's name? I realize that sometimes it's difficult to deal with a lot of people in one scene, but really? Those things are so generic. The generic descriptions continue throughout the rest of the story, with the author describing the the home as nothing more than a "large, modern house".The characters themselves are also very bland and two dimensional. The only exception is Skye, who you get to "see" a little more of because of his emotional problems. But not NEAR enough. Dru is an emotional crybaby (which I was not expecting) and Thom sounds like a forty year old man most of the time taking care of his young children. Kara, while funny, it obviously just a character thrown in the mix in order to shake up the relationship aspect of the story. Skye was really the only one I cared about and even then, I didn't get enough of what I needed from him. Character development was not near what it could have been for a story of this length and depth.And on a final note, these are the most smiling characters I have ever seen. I swear, one of them is smiling ever other sentence.  And most of the book is not very smiley worthy. Note to the author: get a thesaurus and learn how to convey that your character is smiling with different words ... or by SHOWING us they are happy about something. No more telling!I was just expecting a great deal more from this plot and I was disappointed all the way around.My Rating:* * Two Mews~LD(as a reviewer, I was given a copy of this book free of charge)