A wonderful, wonderful book. This romance novel is fluffy, feel-good with just enough emotion and turmoil that the actual romance becomes even better. While it is a romance novel, the backstory touching on emotionally abusive relationships and mental health enables the book to be bittersweet — in a good way.
Picture from Goodreads.
SYNOPSIS: In a small town in Maine, recently widowed Eveleth “Evvie” Drake rarely leaves her house. Everyone in town, including her best friend, Andy, thinks grief keeps her locked inside, and she doesn’t correct them. In New York, Dean Tenney, former major-league pitcher and Andy’s childhood friend, is struggling with a case of the “yips”: he can’t throw straight anymore, and he can’t figure out why. An invitation from Andy to stay in Maine for a few months seems like the perfect chance to hit the reset button.
When Dean moves into an apartment at the back of Evvie’s house, the two make a deal: Dean won’t ask about Evvie’s late husband, and Evvie won’t ask about Dean’s baseball career. Rules, though, have a funny way of being broken–and what starts as an unexpected friendship soon turns into something more. But before they can find out what might lie ahead, they’ll have to wrestle a few demons: the bonds they’ve broken, the plans they’ve changed, and the secrets they’ve kept. They’ll need a lot of help, but in life, as in baseball, there’s always a chance–right up until the last out.
I read this book in a day. OK, it’s not that long — clocking in at roughly 300 pages — but it was just that fluffy. I have three main silver linings of this book (and maybe 0.5 negatives) that I’ll list below:
A romance novel starting with a failed proposal in the middle of a stadium, promising drama and spicy romance? Yay! A romance novel with a good, dramatic setup that flops, with a forced sense of diversity and a bland romance? Nay …
Picture from Goodreads.
SYNOPSIS:When freelance writer Nikole Paterson goes to a Dodgers game with her actor boyfriend, his man bun, and his bros, the last thing she expects is a scoreboard proposal. Saying no isn’t the hard part–they’ve only been dating for five months, and he can’t even spell her name correctly. The hard part is having to face a stadium full of disappointed fans…
At the game with his sister, Carlos Ibarra comes to Nik’s rescue and rushes her away from a camera crew. He’s even there for her when the video goes viral and Nik’s social media blows up–in a bad way. Nik knows that in the wilds of LA, a handsome doctor like Carlos can’t be looking for anything serious, so she embarks on an epic rebound with him, filled with food, fun, and fantastic sex. But when their glorified hookups start breaking the rules, one of them has to be smart enough to put on the brakes…
I did not like this book. I’m starting to sound like a lonely, desperate spinster when it comes to how many of these romance books that I’ve been roasting, but I’m sorry — I just can’t bring myself to like some of them, least of all this one. I was just so … disappointed? by it. I’ve been hearing all of these reviews praising Jasmine Guillory’s romance novels, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to pick one up and actually try it. My mistake.
I fell for the juicy premise and the cute cover, but I discovered that this was not my style. I can see how some people really enjoy this style of writing, but I can’t bring myself to like it no matter how much I try. Generally, I enjoy romance novels with an overall fluffy, feel-good sense of emotion to them — this one, to me, felt messy. I couldn’t get on board with the structure or the characters, and Guillory’s style of writing was, to me, not ideal. She’s not a bad writer, don’t get me wrong — I just didn’t really like the way she formulated her descriptions, speaker tags, general story setup. It’s hard to describe because this is such an individual thing between readers, but for people who don’t intend to review this book, it’s probably relatively unnoticeable.
ANYWAY, back to the actual novel. The forced diversity thing I mentioned in the beginning — it was just weird. I’m all for literary diversity in books, as I think everyone should feel that they can find some parts of themselves represented in books, but it should happen in an organic, natural way. In this book it was just very blunt, and generic. This book essentially boiled down the main characters’ personalities into three parts:
Nik: black female writer & Carlos: latino doctor tacos
I can’t remember anything more than that. Their personalities just didn’t feel fleshed out, and I disliked the cardboard-cutout feeling they gave me. This, in turn, turned me away from the romance itself. I just didn’t root for them. I stopped liking them as characters, so I stopped liking their romance, and so I stopped liking the novel itself. Sorry.
The final issue of the book was, to me, the sense that it was heading in no direction. It starts off with a bang, this big, failed Jumbotron proposal, and then it just … fizzles out. There’s nothing else dramatic happening, nothing big or exciting that forces the romance and makes it feel exciting and spicy. It feels more like watching a sped-up Sims 3 gameplay — they just go about their daily lives and then they occasionally have a date and then they stand and stare into a wall and then they sleep and do it all over again. I mean, sure, things were happening in their lives — but they were just normal stuff. A good romance, should — in my opinion — show 1) that both of the characters are growing and experiencing things independently and 2) that these individual growths enable them to become a better couple. Otherwise, the relationship becomes either bland or weirdly co-dependent — which I dislike, at least. In this book, it was just bland. I didn’t feel like I would start bawling and being sad if they didn’t end up together, and I didn’t feel like I’d be any happier when they did end up together.
Spoiler alert: I did not like this book whatsoever.
SYNOPSIS: Darcy Barrett has undertaken a global survey of men. She’s travelled the world, and can categorically say that no one measures up to Tom Valeska, whose only flaw is that Darcy’s twin brother Jamie saw him first and claimed him forever as his best friend. Despite Darcy’s best efforts, Tom’s off limits and loyal to her brother, 99%. That’s the problem with finding her dream man at age eight and peaking in her photography career at age twenty—ever since, she’s had to learn to settle for good enough.
Picture from Goodreads.
When Darcy and Jamie inherit a tumble-down cottage from their grandmother, they’re left with strict instructions to bring it back to its former glory and sell the property. Darcy plans to be in an aisle seat halfway across the ocean as soon as the renovations start, but before she can cut and run, she finds a familiar face on her porch: house-flipper extraordinaire Tom’s arrived, he’s bearing power tools, and he’s single for the first time in almost a decade.
Suddenly Darcy’s considering sticking around to make sure her twin doesn’t ruin the cottage’s inherent magic with his penchant for grey and chrome. She’s definitely not staying because of her new business partner’s tight t-shirts, or that perfect face that’s inspiring her to pick up her camera again. Soon sparks are flying—and it’s not the faulty wiring. It turns out one percent of Tom’s heart might not be enough for Darcy anymore. This time around, she’s switching things up. She’s going to make Tom Valeska 99 percent hers.
What the frack just happened. I needed to vent my emotions in a review after reading this. I have had no prior experience of Sally Thorne’s writing, but I have not been able to escape the millions of glowing reviews of ‘The Hating Game’ (her other book). This led me to believe that her newest romance-novel ’99 Percent Mine’ would be equally amazeballs as everyone made ‘The Hating Game’ out to be. BOY, was I wrong.
First of all, this book made me seriously doubt my English. Yes, it is not my native language, but the way this was written and structured … Miss Thorne had me thinking I was reading in another language. There were just so. many. sudden jumps in dialogue and explanations that left the reader reeling. I thought I was stupid, or tired, or just missing the point — but no. Every other paragraph was like metaphorically crossing a river, only you had no bridge and were swept violently away by currents and lost all sense of direction. That was the general structure of the book, IMO.
Secondly, the romance itself. Gah. I’m sorry, but Darcy and Tom just did not scream ‘OTP’ to me. The book had a good setup that might’ve been able to shoulder the suboptimal structure, but I thought the characters themselves were … strange. At first, I liked the badass, independent stuff Darcy had going — I was like alright, OK, I can get on board with this. Aaaand then 200 pages go by of her whining, and I’m like: ._.
I got where Thorne was heading with this character — or at least I think I do — but that was not where we ended up. At all. At any point in the book. Darcy turned into a whiny, wannabe strong- independent-woman character. This general personality enabled any and all actually believable strong-independent-woman-moments to feel more like she was being annoying and stubborn. Ouch.
And then Tom. I read another review who also had an issue with what they coined as the: ‘ 2008-brand of massive overprotectiveness these characters sported‘. I agree, wholeheartedly. I want to read about humans — people who can talk and think and reason about collective issues. Not glorified wolves who just grunt and howl and run around instead, because at times the book did really feel that way. The dialogue was choppy, there was a lot of angst that went in no direction, and then they were all fighting suddenly ? As the reader, you’re sitting there like: ?!!?!?!?!?!??!.
I will, however, still give it two stars because the cover is really, really pretty. It’s my bad for being a sucker for the aesthetics.
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