A review by kjanie
Ticket To Love by Donna Jay

3.0

3/5 stars

This was a pretty good romance, but it didn't do anything special for me. The characters were fine, the chemistry was good, but I felt like something was missing. This might be a completely me thing (especially since there are so many great reviews for this book), but I just felt really detached reading this. While I enjoyed the characters and the romance enough to finish the book and generally enjoy it overall, this isn't a story that I will be thinking about for days afterwards. In saying that, I liked Jay's writing, so I am definitely willing to try more from this author.

Tara is a young 21-year old who has moved to New Zealand after being shunned by her mother. She moves in with an older woman, her aunt's boss, and things really pick up from there. This is quite a steamy romance, with very well-written sex scenes. I don't usually read BDSM, so this was quite new to me, but it was done it wasn't anything too hardcore. It felt more like something that just spiced up the romance, and was actually a part of the book that I really liked. It really elevated the chemistry between Tara and Kathryn, and gave them an interesting dynamic.

While I think the chemistry was pretty good, although I felt like it came on quite suddenly, I wasn't really convinced about the deeper emotional connection between these two. I liked their scenes together, but I just wasn't convinced of their love, especially towards the end.

There was a lot of family drama in this book, which was entertaining to some extent but also got grating pretty quickly. Tara's mum was just awful and really soured the book. While I'm not against having 'bad' characters, I didn't feel anything genuine about Tara's mum. Instead, she just kept getting worse and worse, and stayed in the story for seemingly no reason. I kind of wish some of the family drama aspects were pushed aside so that we could see more of the characters together. It also wasn't anything particularly unique, with many queer books having a character that has severe mummy/daddy issues. Perhaps if it was done in a more unique/memorable way it would have been interesting, but I just found it to be a hindrance on the story.