Review: Charming Secondary Characters (Slight Spoilers)
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 6, 2014
I am not going to bother with a summary of the book.  The book description given by Amazon is an excellent summary of the plot.I hesitated to buy this book, because I don't care for contemporary romances.  I prefer Urban, Paranormal and Fantasy romances.  That said, I bought the book because I have read other books by this author, and have found the majority of them to be excellent reads.  As with all of Rhodes' books, the secondary characters are charming and delightful.  Each has a sharply drawn personality and you get so caught up with THEIR story you almost forget about the featured couples' story.  I thoroughly enjoyed Annie, Hardy, Dewey, Rollie, Lorelei and all the rest.  Each one of the secondary characters became an old friend and lots of time was spent developing their personalities by the author.  I enjoyed the plot of the book, but sort of felt that Meg's ex-husband was a "loose" end.  After all, don't we all want to see a glimpse of Meg running into him and figuratively "thumbing" her nose at him?  It felt to me as if Edward got off pretty much scot free after being such a pig.Another thing that bothered me was the motivations of the characters.  For instance, Lorelei lived with her mother, an alcoholic woman of loose morals.  Lorelei was shown to have decency, kindness and caring, but she chose to spend her free time at the local bar?  I would think that given her personality, she would have gotten a break from home by going to the library, the movies,  or a church group.  A bar should be the last place she would frequent given her home life and her disdain for it.Meg wanted to find herself after a nasty divorce.  As the story goes on, we see different reactions of Meg's, but that was what they were - reactions.  When people talked about a job, she asked for it, but I would have thought she would have LOOKED for it.  When she started to put on weight, she was upset until her aunt said it was fine.  Shouldn't Meg have felt within herself that she was fine?  Her aunt pushed her and JT into living together - THEN Meg decided yes that is what she wanted.  Did someone have to tell her?  I really felt that Meg - in a way - was still doing and acting as people told her to do throughout the book.  I don't think she emerged as a strong female character except one brief scene in the restaurant when she faced down the hypocritical church ladies.All that said, I really enjoyed the majority of the book - enough that I will buy the sequel story about Lorelei.  In fact as the book progressed, Lorelei became one of my favorite characters and I can't wait to see her find her happy ending.