2.5 out of 5 stars
Ebook, 290 pages. Published March 25th 2016 by Dreamspinner Press LLC
Blurb:
Even though bankers’ hours leave long weekends for romance, cosmic
intervention is Grant’s only option when money doesn’t buy happiness and he’s
got virginity in spades.
Grant Adams is a twenty-six-year-old bank teller who’s unlucky at love, yet
hopelessly hopeful. After years of horrific first dates, he’s convinced he’s
saving himself for true love. Surely he has bad taste in men because it
couldn’t possibly be his persnickety nature that’s sent them packing.
Tristan Carr has been in a holding pattern since his daughter was born fifteen
years ago, which suits his workaholic lifestyle just fine. This ex-Navy turned
auto mechanic never wanted anyone interfering with being a weekend dad. For
Tristan to rearrange his perfectly orchestrated life, a guy will need to be
special. Or in the case of the newest employee at his bank, the guy will need
to be adorable, shy, and open to the prospect of forever when it shows up at
his window.
Likes:
- Tristan seemed like a nice guy.
- Mel seemed like an interesting guy.
- The plot wasn’t bad.
Dislikes:
- Grant.
DNF 23%
This book was so not for me. I couldn’t get into Grant’s character from the start. It wasn’t the OCD, or being a virgin, or being socially awkward. I’ve liked characters who had those traits before. Maybe not all of them at once, but none were enough to get me to stop reading. It took me to about 15% to realize why I didn’t like Grant. He has the emotional maturity of a teenager.
As soon as I realized that, it all made sense. And I thought I’d be okay with things now that I’d recognized it. I told myself I’d continue to 30% and then see how things were going. And I gave up at 23%. I just couldn’t. Grant is 26 years old and he obsesses about what to say/ how to act/ what people are thinking about him in the exact same way I was when I was sixteen.
I get that Grant has an (unrealistically) bad dating history and that he had zero self-confidence. He’s also a victim of the ‘I’m awkward and clumsy and those are character flaws’ type of thinking, which I personally hate. But beyond that, there are just some things about him that are meant to add to his awkward virgin personality that are simply not realistic at all.
I’m willing to believe that he’s a virgin who’s never been kissed, but I don’t believe that he has no t-shirts (just work clothes) and he’s never once had anything alcoholic to drink. He talks about going out with friends and travelling to Ireland and around Europe, and he went to college. These might seem like little nitpicky things, but there’s no explanation given for them, which makes them seem like things the author just threw in to make Grant seem even weirder.
I gave up when Grant started thinking that Tristan might be ‘the one’ after they’d only had one kind-of date. It was just too teenager for me to believe. If Grant had been a seventeen year old with his first boyfriend, and he thought they’d be together forever, it would have been more believable. As it was, I knew I’d only get more annoyed if I continued reading, so I stopped.
It really was a shame too, because I liked the setup and all the characters besides Grant. I think that if Grant had been just a little more mature or even more confident, I would have been fine with the story. That’s why I didn’t give the book a one star like I usually do when I DNF. The book wasn’t bad, per se, it just wasn’t for me.
Love is Love Reviews 