2.5 Stars
This seems like one of those “it’s me not you,” moments because while the writing was good and the storyline was interesting, there was a lot that I didn’t care for. I would like to preface by saying the first 30% of the book, I really liked! It was interesting, we had a FMC who was sexual and not an innocent virgin, and I liked the back and forth between Charlie and Simon. Then, I made the mistake of learning that book two is about Con which made every interaction between him and Charlie worse, and then more and more little things bugged me as I moved on.
Firstly, the relationship Charlie had with Con wasn’t my favourite. For one, he’s supposed to be completely hung up on this other woman but Charlie is “special” and they have a lot of affectionate moments even after Charlie and Simon start seeing each other. Then, when Simon sees her leaving Con’s place in the morning in his shirt, looking affectionately at each other, touching and kissing, he confronts Charlie about it only for her to tell him to get over it. I love when the women has previous sexual experience and owns it but I think there should be a level of respect for your current partner when it comes to a guy you used to hook up with. Like maybe take into account how your boyfriend would feel about you sleeping in the same bed as another man and not just snap and tell him to get over it when he brings it up? Just a thought.
That leads me to Charlie. She was annoying to me. She seemed to be trying too hard to be a badass and her whole personality was a little unlikeable. Like I said before, she’s goes too far with embracing her previous sexual experiences saying she can do whatever she wants and has her walls up at even a hint of a conversation about it. She also made the dumbest mistakes and made the whole thing that much more frustrating. Like walking home drunk and alone at night from a bar. And why would she ever think making a deal with the FBI without a lawyer present was a good idea?
Now the issue I had that took this from a three star to a two star read for me was Simon. This is where I’m definitely in the minority and it’s completely a me thing but he just annoyed me. He was so dramatic and whiny to me. Constantly complaining about always having to chase her. But if he just gave it a second, he would realize about half the times she was actually going to come after him. Also these two don’t have a single mature conversation throughout the entire book. Their big fight at the end was about how she was lying to him the whole time but he already knew that. He knew she was keeping things from him and multiple times mentions how he knew they needed to have a conversation about her secrets but he didn’t want to because he was afraid of losing her. They did have brief “words” (not even a conversation) acknowledging they both know she’s keeping things from him but that’s it. So for him to make that a big issue when he was the one that never brought it up was odd to me. It was also a little hypocritical as he told his parent about Charlie not being about to make it to dinner when he never even told her. Also his “everything else slips his mind when he’s around her” excuse was frustrating and hypocritical because he literally goes to an event with another women then comes back to Charlie and sleeps with her. Sir, you too have been omitting the truth. There’s no way it didn’t cross your mind to tell her when you were rushing to change out of your suit to go sleep with her.
Lastly, I didn’t like any of the last 100 pages. He blows up at her for something he knew she was already doing, completely ditched her to deal with her life exploding on her own, she leaves, he gets her a lawyer (which is apparently a big romantic gesture), she’s stuck in jail, he barely tries to see her, doesn’t even try to get a message to her through the lawyer, doesn’t bother with her for weeks, then sends her a plane ticket thinking that’ll solve everything. Yes, I know there were reasons for him not going to her and not being able to reach her but we didn’t get to see any of him even trying which made it fall flat for me. Then the author tried to convince us that Charlie knew all along he was still there for her and still loves her by sending a measly lawyer her way. I may be a little over dramatic here but it was just the last thing that piled onto the many things I didn’t like about the book.
That being said, objectively, it’s a decent book. It was fairly well written, and the story was interesting enough as I’ve stated before, but it just had many small things that I personally do not enjoy reading about. So objectively, 3.5 stars, personally, 2 star, rounded to a final 2.5 star rating.