Review: Needs a lot more work.
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 14, 2013
I liked the opening chapter of this story - it suggested it was really going great places. Unfortunately, for me, the rest of the story failed to deliver. There were too many things I really didn't like for a $2.99 book, to the point I couldn't be bothered finishing it and returned for a refund.Some of the things that really annoyed me:* Unless I missed something (and I don't think I did), there is virtually no physical description of the heroine, Tabitha (Tabby). She has long hair. That's all I could work out. No idea of its colour, or the colour of her eyes. Whether she's tall or short, fat or thin. (I figured, as a former dancer, that she was small and thin, but there is the odd, veiled reference to her lack of fitness and her inability to stop eating; so, for all I could glean, she quite possibly no longer had a dancer's physique). It was all too confusing, trying to picture the main character with no description and it even became quite laughable when she attends the hairdresser at one point and there is still not one descriptive reference in relation to her hair (other than it's long enough to be in a ponytail or plait). Strange.* The hero, Noah, has sandy hair at one point, then a few pages later it's dark. Again, strange.* The heroine is damaged and there are a number of references to what has happened in her past, but it is all delivered in 'dribs and drabs', resulting in so little cohesive detail that it's really hard to feel that much empathy for her. Added to this, she's always one breath from a panic attack, yet somehow manages to function fine in other situations that should be causing her concern. It was all a bit disjointed and didn't create any sense of credibility about her dramatic past.* There is a 'mean girl', Jenna, in the story, but her villain status and the intense dislike (and even fear) that the heroine feels for her is a bit hard to understand, because Jenna doesn't do anything too nasty until well into the latter half of the story. I think Jenna is meant to represent everything that Tabitha is running from in her past, but the past is so poorly drawn that, again, it's hard to empathise with Tabitha's immediate antipathy.* There are times when the author fast-forwards the story so much that you literally miss weeks of the heroine's life. Then there are other times when you're going through the minutiae of what she's eating with her father and step-mother. Aside from one lecture group that she has with the hero, it's almost as if she isn't even at university. There are also some strange scenes where the timing is off, like when she just enters the classroom, has a hissy fit at the hero and stalks out, all before class starts; but the impression is that she left at the end of the lesson because there is no comment from the overly-involved lecturer or the hero about her ditching class. Frankly, there is inadequate control of the timeline and plot development. Also, unless American universities are dramatically different to Australian ones, I also wonder if the author actually attended uni herself, because there are times when the setting and circumstances just don't ring true.* A few too many coincidences for me: the guy Tabitha tries to one-night stand just happens to turn up at a dance production a day or so later and, of course, she stumbles into him; then he just happens to be in one of her classes; then he just happens to be her supervising editor at the campus newspaper; later, after they have established a connection, he just happens to be randomly walking past a park where she has randomly stopped. Random, random, random. Waaay too random.Having said all that, I believe there is hope for this author to improve her writing and I wouldn't completely dismiss her future endeavours.