2.5 out of 5 stars
E-book. 256 pages. Published July 7th 2015 by Interlude Press
Blurb:
When New York-based memoirist Aaron Wilkinson gathers with his high school friends to marry off two of their own, he is forced to spend a week with Nik, the boy who broke his heart.
As they settle into the Texas beach house where the nuptials will be performed, Nik quickly makes his intentions clear: he wants Aaron back. “He’s coming hard, baby,” a friend warns, setting the tone for a week of transition where Aaron and Nik must decide if they are playing for keeps.
Likes:
- Good reason for the week long pre-wedding gathering.
Dislikes:
- Lots of side characters with little introduction were hard to keep straight.
- I was initially confused by the romance’s timeline.
- Didn’t connect with either man.
- Hate that Aaron is made to feel like the breakup is his fault.
- Didn’t like any of the characters.
- All the time jumps, e-mails, blogs, texts.
- So much felt like filler.
- The epilogue is told entirely through voicemails, blog posts and text messages.
This book was massively not my cup of tea, and I would have DNFed it if I wasn’t reading it for a challenge. At first, I thought I didn’t connect with any of the characters because I’m not a twentysomething anymore. Then I realized that I have no problem reading stories with characters in their twenties. There was something about the way this book was written that was a massive turnoff.
The one thing I did really appreciate was that there was a concrete reason why everyone was gathered for a week long pre-wedding hang out session. They were all being used as unpaid labor to help decorate the house, make the food and wedding cake, tailor the clothes, help shop, make the music playlist, take the pictures, and more. Which, honestly, sounded awful. Bridezilla Alex did practically nothing to help any of them.
There were a lot of side characters, and all of them got introduced at once when Aaron arrived at the house. It was hard to keep them all straight, especially since many only got a few lines of introduction.
In a similar way, it was initially hard for me to keep the timeline of Aaron and Nik’s romance straight. There’s so many flashbacks and references to the past that I didn’t have a good grasp of what had happened between them until about halfway through the book.
Neither Nik nor Aaron was particularly likeable. The same goes for the side characters. They’ve all just finished college and are looking back at their high school days with nostalgia. It definitely didn’t feel like enough of a time gap for the intensity of emotion. Not when they should have been looking forward to the next step in their lives.
I get why Aaron thought about high school a lot. That was when he and Nik were together. Aaron’s still not over Nik, in part because their breakup lacked closure. He never did know why Nik suddenly decided not to follow the plan they’d made and go to college in New York with him.
I absolutely hated that Nik made Aaron feel like it was his fault they broke up. And I don’t mean as teens. Adult Nik made adult Aaron feel bad because when they broke up as teens, Nik didn’t explain anything to Aaron. Despite Aaron calling Nik to ask what was going on, Nik didn’t tell him anything because he wanted Aaron to show up in person. Nik wanted Aaron to get over his own heartbreak so he could coddle Nik, who’d just learned that his parents didn’t have an infinite amount of money.
I think I would have liked the story more if it hadn’t been for the time jumps, flash backs, and use of e-mails, blogs, texts. I especially hated that the entire epilogue is told through voicemails, blog posts and text messages. It felt gimmicky.
I know that the wedding preparations were supposed to function as a subplot, but they ended up feeling like filler. I didn’t care about the wedding or the bride and groom. Especially since it turned out that Alex was a cheater, and David got mad that Nik and Aaron were getting involved, when it was obvious that would happen. The entire story takes place in a week, and it honestly felt like there was more flashbacks and filler than anything else. I got to the point when I just wanted to see the present day romance move forward.
Love is Love Reviews 