Review: So close!
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 22, 2014
This was my first book by this author and I'm very torn about the rating. On the one hand, I thought the romance was solid and the love scenes well written and sexy. The hero Chace was Alpha hot and Faye was sweet without being cloying. That being said, there were just so many other things that pulled me straight out of the story I cannot rate this more than 2 1/2 stars.Chace Keaton is the hottest detective in the small mountain town of Carnal, Colorado.One with a dark past and secrets that tear him up in inside.  Faye, the town's quiet, sweet librarian has been secretly crushing on Chace , who also admires her from afar, for years but circumstances and fate have kept them apart. They come together finally teaming up to solve the mystery of a young boy who has been stealing books from the library. Faye suspects the boy is being abused and enlists Chace' s help to get to the bottom of the situation. Pretty soon neither of them can keep their attraction under wraps and the sparks fly.Sounds like a good read and it could have been pretty close to perfect had it been shortened by about a hundred pages. If there ever was a book that need it a good editor it is this one. The level of description is insane. For example, one scene where Faye and Chace are eating pizza and the authoractually writes out every time one of them picks up a slice and chews it. Phones do not just get picked up. The hero picks up the phone, pushes the button and puts it to his ear and repeats the entire exercise upon hanging up. This got really tedious really fast. There were also lengthy , repetitious monologues coupled with exhaustive descriptions that took up pages upon pages. By the time the character got to the point I had already forgotten what had happened three or four pages back. Another example of too much detail every time Faye and Chace had sex she had to go clean up. He would tell her to . Do I really want this level of reality in my escapism? Do I have to read that Faye changed into clean panties? I should hope if she changes into something that it is clean. Do I want to read about it? Nope.The dialogue was also curiously worded at times. Sentence structure was super wacky and questions were always statements which meant that not only was I, the reader, confused but also the character had to repeat the statement to clarify it was a question in the first place. Confusing to say the least. There was also a lot of whispering going on. Everyone and I mean everyone whispered. I get that Faye was a librarian but what was everyone else's excuse? Every other line of dialogue was whispered. It was really annoying after a while. In the end, I found myself skimming too much to justify giving this book a higher rating. There was a really good story here it just got buried and I find I do not have the patience to dig through crazy, repetitive, super long paragraphs about useless info like the fact that the mayor's daughter had a traditional Quinceanera party. Things like this filled up this book and did absolutely nothing to move the plot forward. Too bad because it really had a lot of potential and I really would like to find a new favorite contemporary author. 2 1/2 stars.