Sandra @ My Fiction Nook

I don't really have anything good to say about this book, sadly. The blurb sounded interesting, but now that I've read the whole thing, that was about all that was interesting about this book. It needs a serious editor, first of all. Run on sentences are only the tip of the iceberg. 

Frankly, this read like a 3rd rate fanfic story, hastily thrown together. There is sooo much overly detailed info for things I didn't care about - like what Rafe's Tavern serves for food, or what Justin is wearing when he comes into the bar, or how Justin takes off his coat - and not enough substance to carry this story line. 

All telling, no showing, consistently dumping irrelevant information.

A detective in the bar, a little drunk, I guess, relays the entire story of the relevant homicide that happened the previous year, and that is how the author chose to give us the background info on what took place. Seriously, a detective doing that in a public bar, drunk or not, should be fired. Secondly, this is all info-dumping, clumsily done at that.

Rafe, who is a tavern owner, also knows all about how floral arrangements are made - even though he has no experience with that type of thing, at least not based on what we know of him. 

Both characters are flat and uninteresting. There is no substance to either of them. The only nice thing I can say about Rafe is that he seems to care very much about Justin, but it smacked of insta-love and didn't feel realistic at all. Justin is all woe is me and depressed, but while his outlook is perhaps understandable, he felt to me like someone who is a doormat, who just lets this stuff happen to him, without ever fighting back. 

I stopped taking notes around 25% of this short novella, and just read the rest of it simply to finish the book. Drama with the ex-boyfriend, who is so one-dimensional it's not even funny, Rafe calling Justin "his little man" without there being a relationship at all in place, Justin being all emo and depressed, and talking about needing money to buy the florist shop (not that there's ever any hint given as to why he thinks his boss is planning to sell it in the first place) - it's all told in such a flat, boring way that I was glad this book was only about 13K words. 

The sex scene at the end - oh dear. First, they have "the talk" about exclusivity. Then they do the deed, and then there's the big HEA that I couldn't for the life of me believe in. It happens too quickly, too unexpectedly for me, and it felt like the author was trying to wrap this up in a neat little bow that had no foundation in anything realistic. 

I can't recommend this at all. There is a good story hidden in this, with a decent plot line, but the writing and lack of serious editing ruined it. And that's without counting the missing proofreading, what with the many, MANY punctuation issues that any proofreader worth his/her salt should have found. 

Yeah. This wasn't a good book for me. 

** I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. A positive review was not promised in return. **