Review: ouch
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 06 28, 2013
I couldn't finish this. It was poorly edited with homonyms and nonsensical sentences. What killed it for me was the ham-fisted use of cliches. The romance genre is built on cliches, there is nothing wrong with that. Mr. Ortiz, however, can't use them. He smushed a bunch of them together and called it a story, without checking to see if it made sense. Shamus starts the book off upset about Valentino rejecting him before because he "wasn't attractive." It wasn't a nice rejection either. Now Shamus is attractive, so Valentino wants him and Shamus is okay with it in less than two chapters, with no character development at all. I don't know what that is, but it isn't romance. Add in a snow storm and a B&B coincidently run by a gay couple, who coincidently only have one room left, which is coincidently cramped and you get something I won't read. I had had it when they were sitting in the romantic dining room, by themselves and, apropos of nothing, Shamus tells Valentino about how he was physically abused as a child. It is a nearly two and a half page digression to a man that Shamus is supposed to, at least on the surface, dislike. This is the first book I've read of Mr. Ortiz's writing and at less than half way through, it'll probably be my last.