There have been very few books that surprise me. I typically know by 15-20% what my rating will be. This started as five quacky stars for five glorious chapters. Thereafter, I wouldn’t give this book the leftover bits of a one-star shit flushed down a toilet.
Five Chapters
G’zus, what a mofo disaster. A smile is etched… engrained… against my face as a read this foolishness. I mean Begonia Bidelspach <—— sounds like a curse word, right. This starts with silly mishaps that bring two very different characters and a nutso dog together.
Down-F’ing-Hill
Once the fake dating begins, this becomes less funny and more tedious. There’s a lot of time spent between the characters, a lot of dialogue, deep inner thoughts… but it all feels as forced and fake as the relationship itself.
The only star here is the dog.
As separate entities, both characters are unique enough to be interesting. They’re quirky in their own unique very different ways. She’s an outlandish do-good ray of sunshine that’s mostly warm, but she is capable of giving sunburn when needed. He’s a Scrooge with a bark way worse than his bite.
Together, however, I just don’t feel any chemistry whatsoever. It’s a hard to get past the MMC’s immediate lack of romantic or even human interest in the FMC. Hell, he finds her almost repulsive at first. He physically responds to a kiss, but that’s not enough - mentally, the FMC means zilch to him for too long. The FMC is the same - he could be his brother, a fisherman, a stranger - she just wants to pop her post divorce cherry on something, anything. <<<—— IOW, this is about as romantic as watching a slug pilfer a flower bed.
While that 25%-40% slowly shifts gears into the doing love-stuff, but not admitting it’s love-stuff, I find a lot of this boring, and the characters become more and more irritating vs quirky.
There’s all this noise around the central story, such as the sister phone call. This part of the storyline is missing the funny bone it’s aiming at, and I’m getting very impatient with character and plot development.
There’s some N. Sparks type of lovey-dovey scenes that will be enough for the 🌈 and 🦄 readers, but not me. Problem: I still don’t buy this relationship. With 1/3 left in the book, the storyline has been a flat wavelength ➖➖➖➖ like a very long and wordy first date. Conflicts〰️, struggles,〰️ ordeals, 〰️challenges, 〰️drama, 〰️choices 〰️ any and all story arcing is completely nonexistent.
The sisters together are mind-numbing and exhausting. Skip-reading the 💨.
At 80%, the MMC’s fear is the only 〰️ you get, and it causes a brief separation. It’s too late in the game for fear, doubt, and misplaced priorities. Yet, ironically, I have to agree with him in that I, the reader, have been given nothing (other than words) to believe that the FMC wouldn’t have swooned the same over ANY man showing her the attention she’s been missing. It’s never romantic to feel like ANY character could have been inserted for the same exact story.
BTW, when he calls her Bluebell, a cow immediately comes to mind. 😑 Again romantic? ❌
By 91%, every itty bitty character in the book is trying to convince the MMC that the FMC is worth chasing and risking rejection from. 🛑 It occurs to me that this is the antithesis of everything I find romantic about a romance novel, and, at this point, do I really GAF about any HEA that had to be verbally beat into the MMC by literally every other character in the book? No, which led me to do something I don’t think I’ve ever done. I DNF’d this book at 91%. 🚷
Bottom Line
I kept reading hoping that the spark from the first five chapters would ignite. It never did. The FMC is so long-winded in everything that it depletes the story’s oxygen, smothering out any humor or romance. It takes her character from quirky to annoying. I mean it’s bad when you empathize with the ex husband in telling her to take it down a notch. His fear of rejection is the same. It sucks the wind out of the sails of romance, leaving it dead in the water. The storyline has no storyline other than a meet-cute turning into the type of monotone boring that one would expect from a documentary on why some people prefer banana nut oatmeal to cinnamon oatmeal.