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Taryn Mitchell is just going about her business as owner of a pub passed down to her by her late father from his father, trying to keep away from romantic entanglements. Her last romance crashed and burned, and she doesn’t want to be burned again.
Most of the women in her small seaside town are thrilled when heartthrob Ryan Christensen comes to town to film a new movie. Taryn doesn’t really care; she hasn’t seen his films, and she isn’t at all a “crazy fan.” But she ends up meeting Ryan anyway, when he comes into the back of her pub trying to escape a group of crazed female fans. Of course, the two strike up a friendship, which clearly has chemistry and potential for love, but Taryn has to get past her fear and distrust of men in general. And don’t even mention the mess of complications of being in a relationship with a celebrity.
I decided to try this originally self-published e-book when I learned it was being picked up by a traditional publisher. I read the original version for free from the Amazon lending library. I figured the fact that it was getting published for a larger audience meant it should be a cut above the usual self-published stuff. For the first half or third of the book, I felt convinced that was true. It was fun to read and actually pretty well written. But as the book wore on, I had more complaints. I am hoping that since it’s now getting the treatment from a good editor, it may end up correcting some of the problems that I saw, for instance, that it was entirely too long and could have easily been edited down. I also felt a few plot points toward the end were so obvious that I just wanted to smack the character and the writer.
I think, though, that this author has potential and can create some characters we can root for and a love story that draws us in. This just needs a little bit of good editing. I hope that when it gets that and is published “traditionally,” this book will do well. (At the same time, perhaps they can cut out a bunch of the bad language, which would be quite welcome as well.)
Rated: High, for at least 25 to 30 uses of strong language and sexual scenes. There are several scenes of intimacy, but most are actually pretty limited in detail except for the first, which is several pages long and fairly explicit.
