2.5 HEARTS--This book suffers from trywaytooharditis.



It was too kitschy, too trendy, too many unnecessary words, puns and plot twists. Too much. Meh.

If I could get away with an entire review of just about 50 "meh" and "eh", this would be the book for it. I'll aim to review longer than the blurb. *fingers crossed* But I'd rather get to the point (of which this book really didn't seem to have) other than showing how on scene it could be.

This book tried too hard to impress, tried too hard to be witty...it was closer to lame. Instead of trying to deliver distinguishable characters, other than a few stereotypes (ex. hot tempered red haired man, dramatic effeminate man, the 'butch' macho jock, etc.), their personalities were all kind of the same. It's hard to read a novel of basically the same character with different names.

Frenemies Teddy and Jefferson are college students who don't like each other because Teddy tends to get offended for every damn thing and Jefferson has a tendency to speak without thinking. The thing is Teddy was written to be a big mouth drama queen, but if he just shut up once in a while and stop being quick to be mad (I really can't people like that, always looking for something to be pissed-it's exhausting) he wasn't that bad. Well, if he lost the quips too. In fact all the characters. I grimaced all throughout the read and breathed a sigh of relief when I finally saw "The End".

Jefferson and Teddy would get upset, play fight, avoid each other (quite foolishly) for a long period of time, then have a wank off competition. And then call a truce in the sake of their best friends and their relationship and then start up again for...why? Weak plot device that gets weaker when the ex-fiance shows up in town. The new adults show how adult they really aren't by playing in the big people sandbox and Teddy and Jefferson fall into insta-love during the process. The sex scenes,when they happened in between the quips and long puns was lukewarm because so many words of wasted page time.

This book was two-thirds too long; a stretched-out-should've been novella where the secondary characters remained that...in the background. Noelani and Emmett and Beau get just as much page time as the main characters, maybe more I can't tell in between Noelani and Teddy huffing, hiding, climbing or running away in the heat of the moment. The pranks in the middle of the book served no purpose but I laughed at the Saran Wrap on the toilet seat prank.

This is my first Willa Okati, so I don't know if this is standard fare. If it is, I can consider it my last. Because it's too reminiscent to a writing style that doesn't work for me - the cheesy, campy factor. It took me forever to finish this book, it dragged. Once I finally got to the end, I couldn't believe, I read all of that just for that ending. It was really convoluted for a lot of really nothing. It could have easily been told in 20K tops *shrugs* Not memorable in the least.

P.S. The redhead jokes weren't cool.

P.P.S. Meh. Eh. Meh.



A copy provided for an honest review. " ( )