Review: Anger Inducing
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 8, 2013
I reviewed this book for Martini Times Romance3 OlivesThis book was hard for me to wrap my head around, let alone to come up with the proper words to describe how I feel about it. It's safe to say that I have a love hate relationship with this story. As a whole, it's a great book that evoked a lot of emotion in me and successfully displayed the emotional devastation that multiple miscarriages left behind. However, I had some major issues with Cathy and Arsen, which ruined it for me.Basically the story is about Cathy's inability to move on from the loss of her pregnancies. She refuses to communicate with her husband, Ben, who by the way is about as good as they get. Cathy gets it in her head that Ben is perfect and that he doesn't understand how she feels, but she never even tries to talk to him about it. She lets her miscommunication with him fester into a raging hate, which pushes her to confide in Arsen. I cant understand why she felt that Arsen was the only person that she could talk to, because her husband and best friend had both given her the same advice that Arsen had. That fact alone had me unconvinced about the need and want that she possessed towards having his friendship, how could a 24 year old single man understand the complexities of being married and losing pregnancy after pregnancy? With every swipe of the page Cathy became more hateful, detached, and cold towards Ben. She is motivated by pure single minded selfishness, and completely disregards her poor husbands feelings, as well as any respect for him or their marriage. Her character got to the point that I absolutely hated her; I seriously despised this woman and her horrible decisions. She took a great marriage, to a man that was head over heels in love with her and just blew it to smithereens and then shoved his face in it.And then, there is Arsen. He is cocky, rude, inappropriate, and disrespectful. His only saving grace is crystal blue eyes and pretty boy face.  I can't understand why Cathy is so drawn to him; I didn't feel any kind of chemistry or connection between the two of them, which left me as the reader, completely disconnected. I couldn't really understand what it was about Arsen that Cathy liked, or what he even saw in her for that matter because she was defensive, talked down to him, and was a B. Arsen is a playboy, screws half of Manhattan, is photographed doing drugs off a naked woman's body, says cruel hateful things to Cathy, and for some reason all of this makes her lust after him?Cathy was all over the place with her feelings. One minute she loves Ben, and cant live without him, and a few sentences later, she cant stand his touch, and needs Arsen to survive. But then Ben is her soul mate and he's her forever, but Arsen is the only one that makes her feel alive. This woman was a human ping-pong ball of emotions and contradictions. She spent so much time trying to convince herself that she didn't want Arsen and that she loved her husband, but she kept putting herself in the position to cheat. She went to his apartment alone with him, sat in his lap, held his hand, all while claiming that they were just friends and that nothing would ever happen. Then as the affair began she swore that she couldn't stop seeing Arsen, no matter how wrong she knew it was, she saw the demise of her marriage play out in front of her eyes without any regret or remorse. Being in this woman's head was comparable to having whiplash; she was all over the place. Arsen was horrible, Cathy was horrible, and together they were AWEFUL to each other.I cried tears of heartache for Ben, anger towards Cathy, and straight up WTF towards Arsen. Mostly I was horrified at how terrible and cruel Cathy was to Ben, I just could NOT get over how much I hated her. The POV is mostly from Cathy, but there are a few chapters where it switches to Ben and a few for Arsen. I think that if I had more from Arsen in regards to the build up of their affair, and his feelings towards Cathy, then I would have been more connected to them, or would have better understood her choices.  But have no fear; there is a happy ending. Its not what I would have preferred, as I felt that Ben deserved so much better and that Cathy should have been made to suffer forever for what she did to that poor man.My choice to only give 3 olives is due to the fact that I just didn't like Cathy. I spent more of the book angry and pissed at this women then anything else, and I hated her choices and reasoning. I get that you can't write this kind of story without vilifying Cathy, but I was just too consumed with anger towards her to see many redeeming qualities.