ilibra's review
2.0
My god, did that take a while for me to finish. I started this sometime last year and was bit put off at the beginning. The writing style seemed very amateur to me; the first person perspective added to the clunky, repetitive sentence structure reminded me of some first time fanfiction writers, to be honest. The way that characters "explain" things to the reader is just really weird and always sounds a bit wrong. I can't exactly put my finger on it, though.
But I kept on reading, because the story premise was really interesting and I thought I could just push through. When I was at about 70% I made the mistake of putting the book down for a bit, because I just couldn't get the motivation to keep reading. I don't know what drove me today, but this book was tormenting me on my "currently-reading" list and I just wanted to get it over with.
Now, I don't want to trash-talk this book or anything like that. Like I said, the writing just didn't appeal to me, the story was fairly interesting, although the mystery wasn't hard to figure out, but I like how things actually escalated and no one got the easy way out. I just overall didn't enjoy this book. I you did enjoy this, good for you! If you're thinking about reading it, I'd say read a sample first and see how the writing style is.
But I kept on reading, because the story premise was really interesting and I thought I could just push through. When I was at about 70% I made the mistake of putting the book down for a bit, because I just couldn't get the motivation to keep reading. I don't know what drove me today, but this book was tormenting me on my "currently-reading" list and I just wanted to get it over with.
Now, I don't want to trash-talk this book or anything like that. Like I said, the writing just didn't appeal to me, the story was fairly interesting, although the mystery wasn't hard to figure out, but I like how things actually escalated and no one got the easy way out. I just overall didn't enjoy this book. I you did enjoy this, good for you! If you're thinking about reading it, I'd say read a sample first and see how the writing style is.
haletostilinski1's review
*sigh* Okay, this is going to be the first book I'm not rating without exactly DNF'ing, because I just skipped a LOT of it but I also did skim and read to the end. So it's like I read most of it but not at the same time.
Firstly, I don't think this is a romance. Like okay, there can be two genre's in one book, but there's always a primary one and I was expecting primarily romance with this stalker/horror type as a secondary genre. It felt the opposite - which is why I also felt like I couldn't rate this, because it wasn't what I was expecting.
First off, this dragggedddd. And the blurb doesn't say who Nicolai's "LI" is so when James showed up I was like...why? So I wasn't invested because I thought they weren't the main couple - they are - but James goes missing after he and Nicolai have a second date or so and slept together, then he's gone, so they barely know each other - even though it was totally insta-love. He and Nicolai know each other for like a week and Nicolai, at least, is already in love.
But then he disappears, and then we don't see him until the...67 percent mark, and he disappeared around 30-ish percent mark.
Also, we don't get on page sex between them - we actually get more description of
Spoiler
Nicolai being raped by DillonNicolai was also very...frustrating at first. Because his next door neighbor, Dillon, is being obviously creepy and when something happens it's obvious what he did, but Nicolai is still making excuses for him. He's still saying "oh he's just a sweet kid, he wouldn't do something like that" and it got really frustrating because this book had him do it foreverrrr. And it felt like the author made Nicolai that forgiving and quick to try to explain away shit to make it seem like it wasn't Dillon, but it was obvious from the start.
Spoiler
also Dillon rapes Nicolai by roofie-ing him and Nicolai doesn't remember it the next day and he keeps thinking how he's never blacked out before and he can't remember anything after the first couple shots of tequila or Dillon being there and he thinks how he's never had sex with someone, even while drunk, he wasn't attracted to and he's not to Dillon, but then he's just like "Dillon wouldn't do that" to raping him and I was just like??? It actually took a bit for the word 'rape' to come up as well.I'm not even putting that under a spoiler because there's no other suspicious person in this entire book and it becomes obvious it's him quickly, and the book doesn't hide it after that long either.
The book was boring too because it took so long to get to the main plot point. It went through Nicolai's daily routine and we got to see him go on a field trip with the high school kids he teaches, going on dates with James (which at the time, I thought wasn't necessary because he wasn't the LI - knowing he was going in might have helped with reading this), and his brother having a problem that was there and gone again - so why were a few pages wasted on it when nothing happened with it?
There were pages on pages of set up, of writing of full scenes of Nicolai doing daily things in life that aren't that interesting if they don't lead anywhere. The first 30 percent or so of the story is Nicolai feeling eyes on him but always talking himself out of it being anything to worry about.
The detective in the blurb only shows up once - I don't remember him showing up again, but then again I did skip a lot, so...but he isn't a big factor in this story.
At the end when the danger is over, no time is spent on the recovery. At all. This book was 236 pages but it felt like 400+ pages, but then at the same time SO much could have been cut and then there would have been plenty of room for the recovery period. It just kind of skips to James and Nicolai getting their HEA and it describes the recovery period and how far Nicolai has come and all that but we didn't get to see it. It also had an opportunity for a sex scene between these two and it ended before that happened.
There were several ways this story could have gone and it just...didn't. I'm glad I got this with KU, because I wouldn't know what to do with it if I had bought it.
I just...don't recommend this book. If you're looking for primarily romance, definitely not this. But even if you're not...the plot is still dragged out - somehow with 236, this is a slowww read - the characters don't have a crazy amount of depth, and Nicolai at 35 years old often comes across as naive and way too optimistic, even for a nice person.
This just wasn't for me.
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