Review: Stick with Rachel's other books
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 28, 2011
This is the love story of Bella and Burke. A childhood romance torn apart by Burke's fame when he becomes a pro football player. Bella must learn what forgiveness truly is. If they both choose to follow the Lord, then healing from a painful past will be in their future.Let me start by saying I am a big Rachel Hauck fan. I love her books (Sweet Caroline, Love Starts with Elle, etc) and have passed those onto friends and made other Hauck fans! When I saw this ebook I wondered why it was so cheap. And after reading it I can see why. Obviously this is one of Hauck's 1st books. I feel like it could be greatly improved with some major editing.There are several times when she skips back to the past to tell a story, and I don't mean she's goes back 10 years to tell a story. I mean she constantly has Bella at a place where she remembers back to the previous WEEK and retells an important run-in or date with Burke. The story would have grabbed me more if Hauck would have just told the story in it's recent day order. There was enough jumping back to the past when they were in high school that we didn't need more jumps for short time periods. I know I'm not explaining that well, but I'm not a writer. ;-)Also the story started with such anger and bitterness. And I've read books that start similarly and it Can work. But something about this one didn't. There's no humor to lighten it up, nor is there enough warmth into Bella's character to help soften it. Over all Bella's character wasn't really shown on a deep level. I read in the back of the book that Hauck based the Bella character on her sister. I wish she would have given more depth to her in other areas. She only really gave us bitter Bella who hates Burke.Over all there was just nothing really captivating about this story. I feel like the plot line could have been great, but it just wasn't carried out well. I hate to say, I just would not recommend this book to anyone. I'm  giving _This Time_ a full 3 starts because I love Rachel Hauck. But really I would only give it one and a half stars if it was an unknown author. I'd want my 4 bucks back.