I really wanted to love this. I found out about it because Jensen Ackles tweeted about how his good friend Kris Polaha had written a book. He hadn't read it but needed someone to do so and let him know how it was. It's definitely not a book that I would expect Jensen to read. But I was interested - I've seen Kris Polaha in movies and TV shows, and so thought, what could I lose?
Well... I could lose the time it took to read the book, and the money to buy it in the first place. But it's not awful. I was just disappointed. Polaha's co-author is actually a writer. Gomez has work on her biography, she's written before. So when I'm reading this and thinking that it feels like an amateur, I'm surprised.
The story is honestly really cute. Feels a lot like something that would be the screenplay for a Hallmark movie. And maybe that's where the problems lie. There's not a lot of character development. There's no nuance to the characters, and we don't get to see enough inside their heads. It's almost as if the authors have forgotten that there aren't actors to show us the emotions through facial expressions. We needed them to write it out. Ideas jump around a lot, and the characters jump around in their thought patterns. There's no consistency, no way to really get to know who the characters are. Valuable print space is spent on describing the clothes the characters are wearing instead of letting us know how they're feeling, or what their motivation is. I'm a very character-driven reader - if there's a good character I can read anything and think it was a good story. But this one was tough. I just wanted to like these characters, but even by the end, I found them very flat. There was very little dimension.
I guess the disappointment comes from knowing that there was a lot of potential here. And from assuming that the authors actually had a good story to put out there, and it wasn't just put into print because it had a name attached to it. I don't know how much actual writing Polaha did on the story, but I now have the negative feeling that this was only published in this way because it has his name on it. They know there are people who will buy it because of that. I'm the proof. (There's also an incredibly eye-rolling mention of the actor from Life Unexpected and how one of the characters has a crush on him.)
The other sad point is that this is the start of a series. I'm torn here because I hope as the series progresses the writing and character development would get better. With practice things generally do, right? But the idea that there would be a series given based on this book is frankly disheartening. I've read Harlequin novels that are better put together than this. And they're generally considered the pulp of the reader market. I don't want to be considering ways that sections could be re-written for better impact while I'm reading a book. But I was. A lot. I don't know whether or not I will read the next book. I don't know whether it's worth my time or my potential frustration. But I want to give it a shot to improve also.
I don't want to say it was all bad - it wasn't. It really did have great potential. The base story was definitely a Hallmark movie formula but has some interesting pieces to it. But there just wasn't enough development to those pieces to make the book flow easily, and enjoyably. I want to love it. But I just can't.
#37-2021
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