Review: Far from a perfect world.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 29, 2012
Based on the other reviews, I feel like the odd ball out. Unfortunately, I was not able to suspend my disbelief with this story. While admittedly this isn't really my genre (futuristic-y), it sounded interesting and it did start that way.Death is cured and everybody gets to be young and hot. Okay, I can handle that. A zero population growth mandate will obviously make conceiving difficult. Gotcha. Of course there are loopholes and I'm not going to spoil it for people who want to read the book but the road to having a baby gets to suck for at least one person.The couple is looking to have a baby and travel to visit a distant relative to ask a favor. It wasn't until we find out what is the couple is asking for (which is required in order to reproduce) that I balked. Then I balked at his reaction and I balked some more when it came off like it was no skin off his teeth to oblige them. It just didn't jive for me, it was unrealistic and it made me dislike the characters for the absolute gall to ask that of someone they don't even know. So as a favor for doing what they've asked..the distant relative would like to have sex with the wife. How very indecent proposal of him.As for the sex scene...um, no. I'm not saying I don't like menage in my books, that's a big ole lie. I'm saying that this one didn't work because you can't go from zero to 60 the way the couple (or at least the husband) did. It has to feel realistic to me, and this felt far from it. If someone is feeling guilty and unsure about sharing his wife, he's not going to be *that* happy to share all of a sudden. It kept me removed from the scene because I spent it confused about the enthusiasm that felt false.I gave it three stars because even with the issues with believability, the author did a decent job for 38 pages with an interesting concept and it was free.