What in the hot and crispy Kentucky Fried f*ck is this f*ckery?
JFC, what did I just read - and why is there not a single review somewhere that addresses how weirdly f*cked up this story was? Are people that blind? Or is it just that they are being paid that well to post such glowing feedback?
Full review to come later. I'm going to bed.
~~~~~
Updated 11 July 2020
These days I try to choose books that are KU only because it doesn't involve my having to shell out any more than the $10/month I pay for membership. And it's not that I'm cheap, it's that finding a good read anymore is like Russian Roulette and taking a chance on a book and buying only to wind up hating it is not okay with me.
I bought this book with little reservation based on the blurb. It intrigued me by hinting at being the type of angsty, push-pull, unrequited love story that I just can't resist.
It had a promising start, but right away the story veered from unique to cliché in many areas. And also into straight up weirdness and hypocrisy in others.
Straightforward, this book is about Natalie and Cole who meet and share an instant connection, but Cole is engaged to be married and so even though the reader knows the story will focus on their journey, for storyline purposes Cole's engagement is a pretty insurmountable hurdle. He is in love with his fiancée, and he is not a cheater. And neither is Natalie a girl who will go after someone who is taken, despite her heart's conviction that he is 'the One.'
So, so far, so good.
Handled properly, this could have been a cracking good read. It had a good premise. But in order for it to work a few things needed to exist first. A writer needs to have a basic understanding of human nature and to be able to create characters that are consistent. They also need to know those characters inside and out and continually ask themselves if a particular character's behaviour and actions are true to who they really are. The heroine wasn't too bad here - for a change - but this is one instance where the writer should have stuck to the sole POV of the heroine because Cole? Oh my life, what an example of poor characterisation. This guy was all over the place, and not in a way that would seem believable given the situation. He came off as sanctimonious, stupid and at times, unstable. I needed him to be worthy of the love Natalie had for him and he just wasn't.
An unpleasant note early on was the writer's inexplicable choice to attribute Cole's stance on fidelity to religion. I'm agnostic and don't love it when religious doctrine finds its way into a story, but in this case I found it very offensive. Agnostic I may be, but I was also raised in the Catholic church, so I know a few things. You can't pick and choose what part of religion suits you and discard what doesn't. It's not right to cling to your beliefs about infidelity being a 'sin' based on your upbringing in a church-going home while engaging in premarital sex - which is also a sin. Getting drunk is a sin, too. As is lust. If you're having those feelings and allowing them to take hold while you're promised to another, it's a huge red flag in more ways than one. Dishonesty is also 'sinful,' and that includes being dishonest with oneself.
I'm sure the intent in the emphasis on fidelity was to paint Cole as a noble, honourable man but he came off as a sanctimonious hypocrite in addition to being none too bright. Instead of making his fiancée Victoria a real, relatable person the writer chose to go the route of the caricature of a 'mean girl' - the erstwhile high school bully of the heroine. But she was terribly one-dimensional and her OTT past actions were basically hearsay because she never interacted with the heroine in the present. Cole's bff was dating Nat's bff and Nat had begun to date another mutual friend, so they were all together quite often, but there was never a real interaction between Natalie and Victoria. We just heard how horrible she was.
It bears mentioning that nobody liked Cole's fiancée. But even after he learned what a monster she was and with all the signs she was cheating on him literally flashing over her head he ignored it all. Because cheating was 'sinful' and he wasn't a cheater. Because he believed he loved a woman that he lived with, yet she was never home. One who always had an excuse to get out of spending time together and no longer wanted to have sex. She would disappear at the same time as one of his mates - who smoked - and come back smelling of booze and cigarettes. She even claimed that everyone hated her. None of these things tipped Cole off that he was being made a fool of. It didn't even seem to anger him that this woman he wanted to marry had repeatedly bullied Natalie. And this wasn't harmless stuff but vicious, physically and mentally scarring acts. Victoria was damn near a psychopath and this guy was too holier-than-thou (thick in the head) to see it. And I got so sick of his fidelity bullshit I wanted to cut someone.
And for the record, you can NOT commit adultery if you ARE. NOT. MARRIED!!! That is a fact and the Bible substantiates it, proof for any religious types out there. Anyway, in my opinion, unless people are bound by a vow cheating and infidelity are subjective. Actual adultery is a whole other species and didn't exist here.
Please, writers, know your facts.
The problems with this story were multitude. As in the majority of this genre of late the writer treats sex and love as the same thing. I saw plenty of lust and sex between Cole and Natalie, but what I didn't see was a connection. I didn't see soulmates. I didn't see any reason they should be together. Cole never put Natalie first, even after believing so long that she was his soulmate and the whole truth came out about Victoria and he dumped her. Even after they finally acted on their feelings, he wound up marrying VICTORIA after she told him she was pregnant. Mind you, they hadn't had sex in months and she claimed they had done so on a night he was passed out drunk. How convenient. But dumbarse that Cole was, he never questioned it and even FORGAVE HER for torturing his supposed 'soulmate' - who she had actually been stalking and threatening again, it turned out. He fucking MARRIED the cow because he was so 'honourable' and claimed to still love her. WHAT. the fuck. He totally was TSTL.
And what fucking century are we living in that he HAD to marry her to do the right thing?? He owed her nothing and was too thick to see she'd been cheating for months with a man he considered a brother!
I really think the writer knew she was in over her head here because at around the halfway point Victoria and the OM were taken out of the equation when they were killed in an accident. But even though she stole a huge amount of money from him and was killed with her lover after running away to be with him and he knew that she'd cheated with his friend for months, he mourned her! He felt guilty for her death, that it happened because he'd been unfaithful 'in his mind' 🙄 - and then he just went completely off the rails and blamed NATALIE. And it wasn't believable or even understandable and it's one of the reasons I mentioned human nature. His reactions to everything were inconsistent and along with the way he acted were nothing like a real person. He made no sense and was just really unstable and not worthy of the hero role.
So, the book was kind of a mess. It floors me that as yet there is no mention of at least the more obvious flaws with it. In addition to what I pointed out, there is too much drama that didn't move the story or even benefit it. A gang shooting at a club. A stalker ex - yeah Natalie is sooo speshul that she gets TWO stalkers. The way Victoria was killed was even too much, driving off a cliff and crashing into the ocean. Really? 😑
The book was poorly edited. No surprise there. And there was an unfortunate tendency for repetitive use of silly adjectives for Natalie. Instead of thinking of her as 'Natalie' she was 'the little temptress' or 'the little seductress' 🤮🤮, which was unfair because she wasn't like that at all and was actually an okay character - her choice in men notwithstanding. But she was also 'the little firecracker,' 'the little this,' 'the little that,' over and over and over. It was an irritating distraction.
Also, the story was choppy as hell, particularly around big dramatic scenes. The scene would end in a strange place only to resume days or weeks later. Or something major would happen and the story would pick up after the fact. Lots of telling here instead of showing and the story often didn't flow well at all.
So, take your pick. The eejit hero who chooses a monster over his soul mate. The religion-based hypocrisy in a clearly secular - and quite frankly erotic - romance novel. The inexplicable extra drama and abruptly shifting scenes because either the talent or simply the desire to properly write them was missing. The amateurish abuse of adjectives. Or how about the central issue, which was the utter lack of chemistry between the leads.
I look at the initial reviews and wonder what the hell everyone else read because it couldn't have been the same book. But maybe someone will read this review and will save themselves $3.99. It's not the amount that matters. It's the principle of the thing, and this story was not worth paying even that small amount.