Review: Up . . . and down . . . and up again!
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 9, 2014
I had never read this author previously and it looked interesting. Once you got to know the characters, they became very real to you and it's as if you were living vicariously through them. Kudos to the author for this . . . but the ups & downs gave me pause, and I almost quit reading more than once.Once you really get a handle on the idiosyncrasies of the central characters, the story line shifts and became buoyed-up by too many pages of quite graphic sexual activity and the characters lost their true humanity (in my opinion). As time went on, and they left the bedroom gymnastics behind a bit, the humanity of the characters again became central. These were emotionally wounded individuals not looking for healing, but finding it in an unliky place.I do not care for graphic sex, although I know that there are those who enjoy the steamier scenes, so my negative comments about the graphc sex is purely my opinion, although I found the insertion of these many pages into the middle of an emotionally charged storyline unnecessary. There was enough chemistry and sexual tension between the central characters to carry the story without it. I felt like I was almost reading a different story.Due to this break in the direction/focus of the story line from emotionally wounded and distant individuals, to sexually charged, then back again to those emotionally wounded and distant characters slowly healing and taking chances, I felt that the story did not flow, but was somewhat choppy.That said, I did like the book and enjoyed the depiction of the emotional trauma of the central characters, but I felt I could not give it more than a 3 star.