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A review by wanderinglynn
Part-Time Lover by Lauren Blakely
2.0
I'll first say the narrators are great. I especially love Shane East's delicious voice. All my comments below are strictly on the writing.
I attempted to read another Lauren Blakely book and DFN'd it fairly quickly. It's not that her books feel generic (although they are) and it's not the unoriginal plots or the insubstantial characters that never stick with you once you finish the last page. It's that the writing is awful. But I picked this one up because, as mentioned above, Shane East, and the first few chapters of this book made me think this one might be the exception.
I did appreciate that even after Elise and Christian meet after they kept missing each other, the "dates" were not meant to be romantic. or inspire romance. They were more the kind of dates you do with friends. I thought that was a fun twist. But then it took over half the book to get to the main plot—the marriage of convenience. More than 50% of the book to get to what I thought was the entire point of the book. But okay, I stuck it out.
But then the whole marriage of convenience a bit too contrived. All of the sudden, Christian needed to save the family business from scheming soon-to-be-ex-sister-in-law and Elise immediately volunteers to be his spouse after spending the first 50% of the book swearing she'd never get married again. Um, no.
The other thing that bugged me, other than Elise waxing every other paragraph about keeping her walls up and not falling for Christian, was that both of them agreed to be brutally honest with each other (that was Elise's whole entire spiel) but then she completely avoided the truth because she was scared the feeling was not mutual. I totally get why Christian did that. Because Elise made it perfectly clear, over and over again, their marriage had an end date. For once, can the misunderstanding be about something other than their mutual feelings that they're both denying and lying to themselves about?
As for the characters, both Christian and Elise are insubstantial and forgettable. No depth, no real reason why either of them want each other beyond the physical. And I just never came around to liking Elise. I found nothing really to like about her and had no idea why Christian wanted to be with her.
As for the setting, this could have been set anywhere. It's actually set half in Paris, half in Copenhagen as the characters meet in Copenhagen. But really, it could have been anywhere. New York, San Fran, Tokyo. Other than the author dropping random Paris tourist locations, I'm not sure the author has actually ever been to Paris. And definitely has never lived in Europe. (That whole public nudity bit, as if Europeans are walking around naked all the time with no repercussions.) Ugh.
So generic plot, generic characters, generic setting means that this author is not on my do not bother to read list.
I attempted to read another Lauren Blakely book and DFN'd it fairly quickly. It's not that her books feel generic (although they are) and it's not the unoriginal plots or the insubstantial characters that never stick with you once you finish the last page. It's that the writing is awful. But I picked this one up because, as mentioned above, Shane East, and the first few chapters of this book made me think this one might be the exception.
I did appreciate that even after Elise and Christian meet after they kept missing each other, the "dates" were not meant to be romantic. or inspire romance. They were more the kind of dates you do with friends. I thought that was a fun twist. But then it took over half the book to get to the main plot—the marriage of convenience. More than 50% of the book to get to what I thought was the entire point of the book. But okay, I stuck it out.
But then the whole marriage of convenience a bit too contrived. All of the sudden, Christian needed to save the family business from scheming soon-to-be-ex-sister-in-law and Elise immediately volunteers to be his spouse after spending the first 50% of the book swearing she'd never get married again. Um, no.
The other thing that bugged me, other than Elise waxing every other paragraph about keeping her walls up and not falling for Christian, was that both of them agreed to be brutally honest with each other (that was Elise's whole entire spiel) but then she completely avoided the truth because she was scared the feeling was not mutual. I totally get why Christian did that. Because Elise made it perfectly clear, over and over again, their marriage had an end date. For once, can the misunderstanding be about something other than their mutual feelings that they're both denying and lying to themselves about?
As for the characters, both Christian and Elise are insubstantial and forgettable. No depth, no real reason why either of them want each other beyond the physical. And I just never came around to liking Elise. I found nothing really to like about her and had no idea why Christian wanted to be with her.
As for the setting, this could have been set anywhere. It's actually set half in Paris, half in Copenhagen as the characters meet in Copenhagen. But really, it could have been anywhere. New York, San Fran, Tokyo. Other than the author dropping random Paris tourist locations, I'm not sure the author has actually ever been to Paris. And definitely has never lived in Europe. (That whole public nudity bit, as if Europeans are walking around naked all the time with no repercussions.) Ugh.
So generic plot, generic characters, generic setting means that this author is not on my do not bother to read list.