Review: Dazed
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 10, 2014
***This book was provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.***Unfortunately I didn’t feel the ‘connection’ here.I think the idea of this book was adorable. It started off strong with the interesting way they met, but after that, the book was incredibly predictable.I didn’t feel any chemistry between Jagger and Aerie, and I thought the depth of their feelings came on without them really even knowing each other. Jagger was likable, but I never really connected with Aerie. I thought she was a bit superficial and maybe too closed off for the reader to get to know. I think this is what hindered me from being able to really enjoy the book. When I’m reading in first person, I want to be able to step into the heroine’s shoes, but I just couldn’t do that with Aerie.A lot of the conversations in this book took place ‘off the page,’ and we heard about them later in Aerie’s inner monologue. I think I would have enjoyed it more if we’d witnessed the conversations taking place. It would have given the reader an opportunity to see Aerie interacting more with characters. There was too much telling and not enough showing here.This is obviously personal preference, but anytime the subject of protection comes up and the heroine insists it’s OK to go in without a condom because she is ‘on the pill or religious about her shot,’ I immediately lose all respect for her. This can take an otherwise level-headed, intelligent heroine and show the reader just how careless she is.There were some nice parts in this book: as I said I really enjoyed the hero and heroine’s first meeting, and the whole ‘Alice in Wonderland’ theme throughout the book was quite clever and cute.On the whole, though, I feel as though the story was rushed and there was a lot of telling as opposed to showing. I may try something by this author in the future to see if a bigger word count makes a difference, but this one didn’t work for me.