Review: Great Writing, Awesome Beginning, Frustrated me at the end
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 29, 2013
3 `Better than normal.' KissesTabitha Kelly is fractured...like cracked glass just moments away from completely shattering into a million pieces. Barely held together after the incident that changed her from the bright beautiful dancer to the shell of her former self. Tabs is a mess - rightfully so. She's been through a trauma...a publicly embarrassing trauma and had to deal with the after effects - that's rough! She's lost friends, lost the life that she knew, I don't know anyone that could go through that unscathed.Noah Adler is kind, sweet, understanding, and patient. He's a soothing balm to Tabitha's troubled soul. He's quite amazing - without even knowing Tabitha's story, he just handles her exactly the way she needs to be handled. It also doesn't hurt that he's got bright blue eyes, is all kinds of yummy and can say the most wonderful things."That's the problem." His lips are at my ear. "I can't seem to forget anything about you."They meet in a bar...he's a means to an end, that's all. Nothing special. (Ha!) She calls him Holden after Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye and he calls her Scout after To Kill a Mockingbird (one of my favorite books - so I LOVED that part)...and the rest is history. ;-)`I hate to admit I spent much of the weekend thinking about him. His smile. Blue eyes. His incredibly sweet personality. His amazing body. But now, when I look at him, all I notice are his full lips.'I like that Clare James was smart enough to not have Tabitha pouring herself into Noah and ignoring her emotional issues. It would not have been believable, so I appreciated that. And she did build that craving for wanting them (Tabitha and Noah) to be together. I felt that pull - they had chemistry and you could feel their emotions and draw to each other. But it felt brief and abrupt sometimes - I would get there, loving their interaction and then it would end and go to a new chapter. I like the `always wanting more' but I do eventually need that `more.'`He makes me forget about everything. When I'm around him, I feel normal. Better than normal.'I liked Before You Go - the story line was different for the most part, the flow and the writing was really good. I can enjoy a quick, hard hitting read as much as I can enjoy descriptive long one - BYG was definitely the former. While a majority of me enjoyed it, I did feel there were some aspects that were grazed over that needed more explanation, especially towards the end. The resolution with Noah seemed rushed (he's playing the piano in the last scene - I didn't even know he played piano). There was conflict with her mom throughout the book, but no resolution and yet she was mentioned in the last scene, like it was no big deal.`To say my life is bliss would be a gross misrepresentation. It is bliss to the nth degree times infinity.'I don't want you to think I didn't enjoy this book - because I did, which might be why the things I didn't like frustrate me, cause I never like knowing there were aspects that did gel and stopped me from loving the book. And it was a different read, it was more about Tabitha rather than Tabitha and Noah. That's not a bad thing, it was a change, a welcomed changed.