ARC Review: The One For Me by Sydney Landon

I truly hate to waste my time so if I start a book and don't finish it, we can all conclude that there were some serious issues. I persevered through this book as long as I could because I like this author and I had faith that the ship would change course at some point during the journey. Around the 55% mark, I lost hope, we hit a iceberg, the ship went dooooown.

The background story seemed interesting. Crystal wants to walk on the wild side, Mark is trying to get off the wild side and on to the slow and easy side. I wanted to see where things would go. The answer is nowhere, things went nowhere. I knew we were in trouble in the first 10% of the book. The book starts when Crystal vomits on Mark and then faints on him. As he is holding her unconscious body in his arms, he decides that he is intrigued by her and she is "different." I'm thinking that was because he was used to women who were, oh I don't know, conscious. It gets worse though because Mark decides that instead of calling a doctor or like one of Crystal's friend, he will take the unconscious stranger home with him and care for her for 2 days. I was completely baffled by this.

I can suspend disbelief with the best romance readers but for goodness sake, how do you take a grown woman home with you like a stray cat? Did no one miss Crystal or wonder why she disappeared off the street. I mean seriously, after 2 days, he was only referring to her as "Angel because he didn't know her name.

Speaking of the word "Angel," OMG, it was used way too much. I actually did a word count because it was driving me crazy. My Kindle says the word is used 197 times throughout the book. That means the word was on more than every other page. It was just too much.

As for the actual relationship between Mark and Crystal, I have no idea how or why it happened. It just comes out of nowhere. One second Crystal is puking and unconscious. The next she and Mark are in love and there is almost no substantive conversation in between those events. The sexual relationship between the two characters also did nothing for me. Mark is supposed to be this kinky dominant guy but we never actually see that side of him once things move into the bedroom. Mark was sweet to the point of annoying me.

I like this author and I hope this book is not a sign of things to come in the future. If this is your first Sydney Landon book, first, read something else. If it's too late for that, don't hold this one against her, read some of the earlier books.

**ARC provided by Publisher**

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ARC Review: Watch Over Me by Sydney Landon

When this book began, I was really hopeful, it seemed like a book that was right up my alley. There is a bossy alpha male, Dominic and a curvy chick with a little bit of an attitude Gwen who hook up pretty quickly. That’s pretty much all it takes to hook me, normally. My problem with this book…Well, I had several problems with this book so let me start with the first problem.

Gwen hooks up with Dominic after she is rejected by Mac who runs off and marries another chick like the day he dumps Gwen. Here’s where things get dicey though, Mac and Dominic are best friends and co-owners of a business. I thought for sure that was going to wind up being a big issue and I was looking forward to the drama/confrontation/whatever. But then, it doesn’t happen. Gwen just hooks up with Dominic and it’s as if the whole Mac thing never happened. I found that truly confusing.

My next issue were the friend scenes. Authors have to be careful about how they use supporting characters. In this book there were a lot of rambling conversations between Gwen and her best two girlfriends but I didn’t feel like it added anything to the story. And because it didn’t add anything, it took away from the story because there were way too many pages of Gwen just hanging out with and talking to her girls. I got to the point where I just started skimming those sections to get back to the actual story.

Next issue, I’m all for insta love except in this book. I just didn’t like the way the relationship between Gwen and Dominic began. It made Dominic seem kind of like an undiscriminating robot who couldn’t do anything but follow his penis. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s how all men are right? But no, seriously, we gotta give the guy some kind of internal thought process.

My last issue that I absolutely could not overcome was the writing of this book. I just did not like the writing. What I disliked the most was the language was used by the author. The references to people swooning every 12 pages, made me want to hurt somebody. And then there was all the really awkward slang being thrown around. For example, at one point Gwen says “holy wet panties” and I was like WHAT? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?!?!?!?! The language was just so cheesy I couldn’t get into what the author was actually saying.

And oh yeah, the sex scenes are really mediocre.

I am sorry, I gave it the old college try and based on other reviews out there a lot of people enjoyed this book. You can go ahead and give it a try but it wasn’t the book for me.

**ARC provided by Publisher**

Purchase: | Amazon | Kindle | B&N | iTunes |