Is this supposed to be a romance? If so, author failed BIG TIME and I got ripped off & wasted my time!
Let me start by saying that I paid for this masterpiece based on the fact it is labeled under fictional ROMANCE. So color me stumped when 99% of the story there is NOTHING romantic happening between the MCs other then just plain friendship. Let me repeat -NOTHING. NADA. ZIP. ZERO.
No kiss. No romantic feelings or attraction, no heavy patting, no sex, no deep conversations, no getting to know one another, etc. So placing one kiss at the end with an ILY exchange and engagement that came out of thin air, does NOT a fictional romance make people!
I paid to read a romance. I did not pay to read a book about a divorced mother raising her son alone and having the "Hero" (aka next door neighbor) lend a hand here and there to help her with chores around the house and babysitting. This is the entire story plot. All about how he bonds with her kid by helping with chores around the house, training their dog, cutting down a Christmas tree and inviting them over to his parent's house (where he still lives) for dinner. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting to see where the romance would come in up until I got to the last page.
Hero is portrayed as a player/manhore who doesn't do commitment but we don't get to see this or learn anything about his past. He acts like a man-child. Heroine, the adult in the room BTW, never learns this major fact about him and one would think that is important if you are going to spend the rest of your life with him (STD's anyone?).
He thinks she is very beautiful, which was already established on Chapter 1 that she is stunning and that people typically only see her as that and never learn the inner her. She married young and got hurt by her ex and while she a great Mother to her son, she is not ready for another relationship. This is the theme for both of them throughout every chapter until the end.
On the last two pages, he realizes he loves her and wants to be a family. There is a kiss and an exchange of ILY's, an introduction of them being boyfriend and girlfriend to on the same breath going to an engagement. Say what? The End.
We never get heroine's POV that she is in love with him and wants to marry him (especially as she says throughout the story that she is not ready for another relationship). So how did she get to suddenly wanting to marry him? How did HE get there?
Yes, there is a line or two that heroine says he is hot and a tinge of jealousy when she thinks he is going on a date or some girl bidding on him but it's easily forgotten. Then also Hero, he out of the blue one moment thinks how he would like to be a part of their family so decides he wants to date her because all his friends have a significant other and are happy and he is the last man standing. So we go from all that to HEA?
And that is the crux of the matter. I understand writing is hard and a lot of work but as a PAYING reader, I expect to get what I paid - not a bunch of filler pages based on no plot or story at all.