Sophie-Claire Wright returns home after her life in Nashville falls apart. She knows that returning home will require some adjustments, but she refuses to live with her parents for long. She sets out to find a job so that she can get her own apartment when she runs into her childhood best friend and crush Jake Cooper. Jake and Sophie-Claire instantly reconnect and find that they can help each other. Jake is looking for an employee at his coffee shop, and Sophie-Claire is looking for a fake boyfriend to keep her mom from setting her up with horrible dates. But the more that Sophie-Claire and Jake spend time together, the more the lines between fake and real begin to blur. When Sophie-Claire finds herself falling for Jake all over again, can she finally get up the nerve to convince him to give them a real shot?
I really liked Jake. He was by far the
high point of the book for me. Through talks between Sophie and Jake,
he was the rich golden boy when they were in school and everything
seemed to go his way. But after Sophie left town and he went
traveling and found himself changing from a boy to a man. Since he
had returned, he was a great guy. He was genuine and nice, and really
sweet. I loved that he had that boy next door way about him, and I
thought that he was a great hero. I really wish that we had been
given some of his POV rather than just Sophie-Claire's. My real issue
with this book was Sophie. Sophie is portrayed to be a tattooed and
pierced bad ass songwriter that has always been a bit of a wild
child. She left home after graduation to pursue her dreams and life
her own life. But the problem for me was that she was almost always
immature and insecure. She came off as whiny and irritating, and I
honestly couldn't see the appeal. I didn't really feel the tension or
chemistry between her and Jake, and to me it was her fault. She was
always second guessing everything and it got really old.
Besides Sophie-Claire's insecurity, I also had a problem with how she handled a lot of things. This story is another case of miscommunication/lack of communication between the hero and heroine, and there really wasn't anything new or fresh here. When these two finally got everything out in the open though, instead of them going for it Sophie-Claire decides to run away because she can't handle things. I know that Jake initially handled things poorly by not reacting the best to her confessing her feelings, but Sophie never really gave him the chance to explain anything. Then they finally do talk and she can't deal? That pretty much killed any kind of connection I had felt to her character, and it was pretty impossible for me to really get behind the relationship at that point. I wanted Jake to be with someone he deserved because he was so fantastic, and to me that just wasn't Sophie. I also felt like this story was a bit slow and drawn out, especially the beginning. I thought that Molli Moran had a great writing style, and this story was well written. For me though, it was simply a matter of not liking the heroine and the fact that this book didn't really have anything new or fresh to it. I think that if you are looking for a straight forward standalone new adult romance, that you might give this one a chance. For me though, this just wasn't what I had been expecting or hoping for and while I enjoyed it, I didn't love it.
**ARC Provided by Xpresso Book Tours**
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Glad you liked it overall despite the issues you had with it. It sounds very character driven which is a must for me in this genre. Thanks for hosting today! :)
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