I absolutely loved the story itself.
Love, love, loved the idea of it, it was beyond adorable, and I really liked where the authors were taking it.
Story-wise, this was a really good read. A really great one even.
However, there is more to a book than a great story, and a novel feeling like a draft is, as much as it pains me to say it, nothing I can just ignore. When a character orders chicken fried rice, she can't suddenly be looking at, and eating, her noodles. A first-person narrator can't be knowing a new-to-her-character's name before that never-before-met-character even gets introduced to her half a page later. Punctuation in random places and chunks of sentences missing shouldn't pop out more than, if at all, once. And all that are examples for why I felt like someone had given up on it before it was finished, yet put it up on amazon to order for just about 14€ a piece; examples for things that a thorough editor or even good beta-readers should have easily picked up seeing I wasn't even reading the novel to find mistakes, yet found enough of them to make this a frustrating rather than enjoyable read.
3/5 because I loved the story
When you think you know what's happening, you're only half way there.
It is enough to break any man: watching what could have been my future slip away before it was ever in my grasp. The possibility of losing someone I loved before she was even mine is something I never would have imagined - certainly nothing I'd ever wish on anyone. I went to her every day and waited. Waited for the impossible, for a sign, for her to look at me... hoping sinners are granted miracles, too.
Just one glimpse of him was all it took.
In the next lane, at a stop light, was the man I would fall in love with and marry. People talk about love that takes time - the kind you fall in to. We were more like a crash and burn. When our lives intertwined, I knew I would never be the same. He was the man I would cherish the rest of my life, who would father my children. In an instant our life together began, and in an instant it would end.
The late nights; the excuses; the lies.
And in the blink of an eye, it was like we never were.
Jamie McGuire was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She attended Northern Oklahoma College, the University of Central Oklahoma, and Autry Technology Center where she graduated with a degree in Radiography.
Jamie paved the way for the New Adult genre with the international bestseller Beautiful Disaster. Her follow-up novel, Walking Disaster, debuted at #1 on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. Beautiful Oblivion, book one of the Maddox Brothers series, also topped the New York Times bestseller list, debuting at #1. In 2015, books two and three of the Maddox Brothers series, Beautiful Redemption and Beautiful Sacrifice, respectively, also topped the New York Times, as well as a Beautiful series novella, Something Beautiful.
Novels also written by Jamie McGuire include: apocalyptic thriller and 2014 UtopYA Best Dystopian Book of the Year, Red Hill; the Providence series, a young adult paranormal romance trilogy; Apolonia, a dark sci-fi romance; and several novellas, including A Beautiful Wedding, Among Monsters, Happenstance: A Novella Series, and Sins of the Innocent.
Jamie is the first indie author in history to strike a print deal with retail giant Wal-Mart. Her self-published novel, Beautiful Redemption, hit Wal-Mart shelves in September 2015.
Jamie lives in Steamboat Springs, Colorado with her husband, Jeff, and their three children.
Teresa Mummert grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania where she began dating her husband when they were only sixteen years old. They married at eighteen and soon moved to Louisiana as her husband began his military career. They are the proud parents of four children that they are raising in Georgia.
Teresa began writing when her husband was deployed to Afghanistan as a way to cope with him being away at war. She soon became a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her work includes the word of mouth bestselling White Trash Trilogy which landed her a three book publishing deal with Simon & Schuster. She has also written the New York Times and USA Today bestselling novel The Note, the USA Today bestselling novel Safe Word, Perfect Lie, Pretty Little Things, the Honor series, Rellik, The Good Girls, Something Wicked, and the USA Today bestselling novel Sweet Nothing co-written with Jamie McGuire.
Future releases include Crave, Cruel, Depravity, The Death of Lila Jane, Hollow, Weeping Willow, Paper Doll, The Deep, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Rocked, Before I Wake, Fall to Pieces, and Victim. She also has a Middle Grade children's novel coming out soon titled The Seeker under the pseudonym T.S. Mummert.
Read my reviews of Beautiful Redemption by Jamie McGuire || The Good Girls by Teresa Mummert || Rellik by Teresa Mummert
