Review: Could Have Been Better
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 08 24, 2012
The copyright on the book says 2000, but the author says that this book was written in the 1990s. Nonetheless, those dates were before the era of CSI and NCIS, wherein pop culture's point of view on police procedurals or "cop and robbers" changed drastically. So, though "Want You Back" is far from being dated, its pacing and characterization are a far cry from the alpha males Jethro Gibbs (NCIS) and Mac Taylor (CSI:New York) and the women they love.This review will have spoilers and I am writing it a little differently from my other ones simply because the author took the time to reach out to her readers. There will be ***SPOILERS***. And just for readers who want to know the rating, this book is PG 13 due to some violence. There are no sex scenes.***SPOILER ALERT*** There are a lot of spoilers after this line.Two years ago, Jake Durnham literally left Jenny Reder at the altar when he disappeared the day before their wedding. But, now he is back and Jenny found out that even after two years, she still loves him. The feeling is mutual, and all Jake and Jenny have to do is found a common ground. But there were other factors involved like the Mexican drug cartel. Jake and Jenny found themselves running for their lives.Great plot, isn't it? And it would have been a great romantic thriller which could have been achieved by either two ways - make the book longer so that the drug cartel's story is drawn out better or leave out the first half of the book wherein Jenny and Jake were courting again in a manner of speaking.I love the idea of forgiveness and redemption. I also love the idea of Jenny and Jake finding each other again and the whole town acting as Cupid. But the suspense was relegated to the last quarter of the book and new characters like the scorned lover Rosa and the unexpected hero Drew were introduced too late. The storytelling in this part was so abrupt that it just killed the story for me.The escape was also "lame" to use the vernacular. As someone here had already pointed out, how can someone miss a helicopter rescue. Helicopters are noisy. Drug cartels might be outlaws but they are far from being naive.So, why am I giving this book three stars? Originally, I was going to give it two stars, but after reading the author's comment, I changed it to three stars. And that extra star is not for effort. It is because she reminded that living in the digital word, we can make corrections in our work, something that was never available to us when everything was hard copy. The author's actions showed that she really cared and that is worth an extra star for me.