Genre: Contemporary romance
Books remaining in my physical TBR: 30
(Spoilers ahead)
This book contains adult themes & sensitive topics, and this review will cover those, so this is a trigger warning, as this review will contain themes of drug abuse/addiction, divorce, the death of a baby (off-page), and emotionally & financially abusive relationships.
I actually enjoyed this book way more than I thought I would. Was it realistic? Maybe, my life isn't as unlucky/tragic as either of these characters', but I only care that the book was 'action'-packed and entertaining, even if the pace of things seems somewhat unrealistic.
Our main characters are Lucie and Caleb.
- Lucie is the 'illegitimate' child of Robert Underwood, who is famous and has some sort of big company; I didn't care too much to remember what kind of company, in all honesty. He was a very minor, minor character. Back to Lucie, she has twins, Sophie and Henry, and is currently going through a divorce with Jeremy, who is extremely rich and seemed (to me) to be emotionally abusive (at least during the divorce process). Luckily, Lucie's aunt left Lucie her house, meaning she and her kids have somewhere to stay, and this happens to be the house her mother would 'abandon' her at over the summer. It would also be where she developed a huge crush on this boy, Caleb, and would watch him and his friends play in the lake next to both of their houses.
- You must be really clever if you can guess who the male main character is... Caleb! He's 4 years older than Lucie and has grown up to inherit his father's company, TSG. I also don't know what this company does; he just has one and is the CEO of a generic company. Maybe TSG stands for Totally Super Generic? Anyways, he's technically married, but his wife has been away for a year... ooo mysterious.
My lord, this book annoyed me a lot, though. Like, Lucie had no backbone whatsoever, and I know it's hard to confront people, but like? Okay, for example, there's a part of the book where Jeremy, Lucie's ex-husband (I should mention he cheated on her with their teenage babysitter, and he's 6 years older than Lucie), sends her a bouquet of flowers and a note asking her to dinner. Lucie, obviously, calls and says no, so he gets annoyed and basically says she'll regret it. Can you guess what he did? He steals her car. I genuinely thought there was no way he managed to do that. Because, first of all, is the USA not meant to be extremely walker-unfriendly? So how unemployed must he be to have the time, during the night, to, presumably, walk to Lucie's house and steal her car with his spare key? SO odd. Fortunately, I've never met many evil people, so for all I know, this could be a common thing for evil ex-partners to do.
I also thought that Caleb was a very weird character. His whole thing at the start is that he is married (to a woman called Kate), but he hasn't seen her in a year. Because she's in rehab for drug addiction. This book has it all. She went to rehab for a few months, checked herself out of rehab, then returned to it - he only knows because of the bills he's receiving. Caleb must also be an invertebrate! In a whole year of having no contact with your wife, you don't contact her? But also, the reason she went to rehab is that she cleared one of the company accounts, and going to rehab was the compromise for the company not pressing charges. I can kind of sympathise with Kate, though; drug addiction is likely such a difficult thing, and it's probably something she fell into when her baby died shortly after giving birth. Oh, but it's okay for Caleb; he wasn't there for the birth of his child because he was too busy working. You know who was there, though? His best friend, Beck, who has a massive crush on Kate. What is it with this friend group and wanting a piece of your friend's long-term partner? Such an odd theme to have in multiple books. Another thing, though, is that Caleb did not even stay to comfort her whilst she mourned her child. He worked more. No wonder she became a drug addict! I really don't understand why he didn't divorce her earlier when he didn't seem to like her that much.
They were both just so incredibly hard to find relatable. Obviously (maybe?), I'm only 18 and so don't have all of the life experiences that these characters will have, but normally the characters in books I read will be somewhat relatable; like even Katniss Everdeen was relatable through her internal monologue! In the scene when she's being hunted by the Career pack, she's clearly being a snarky teenage girl when she says Glimmer can barely use the bow, because she's obviously annoyed that she (Katniss) doesn't have the bow, which would have easily allowed her to do better in the games. Sorry, that was a bit of a tangent, but I hope it makes sense. I feel as though Lucie could maybe be relatable to divorced mothers, but even then, her children aren't really mentioned, and I can imagine that two 6 year-olds would take up a lot of your time, especially as a single mother! She's also constantly being hit on by characters in the book, and maybe this could be realistic, but not everyone is drop-dead gorgeous! So maybe someone like Zendaya or something would be able to relate? Then Caleb is already a man, which I find hard to relate to, and he's the CEO of the company? Maybe Jeff Bezos could relate, but even then, he (hopefully) isn't seeking relationships with his employees. But I suppose books don't have to be relatable, just entertaining, which I thought this one was.
I think my favourite character was Lucie's friend, Molly. I wish we could have some sort of book or short story on her - like an end-credit scene kind of thing? I'm thinking A Minecraft Movie with Jennifer Coolidge's character and the villager in her office, and her ex-husband comes crashing in. I really hope that the people reading this have seen the Minecraft movie end-credits scene.
Anyways, yes, I did rate this book 4 stars, even after all of my complaints, but it's because I kind of enjoyed it the way my aunty enjoys watching American Housewives or whatever it's called, and in the way chavvy girls love Love Island. It was just such an engaging read because of everything that happened. I still wouldn't reread it like.
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