grisette_books 's review for:

Southern Storm by Natasha Madison

2.0

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2 stars

Okay, this one had all the hallmarks of the nicely angsty small town romance what with tropes like h from the wrong side of the tracks, single mommy h being town shamed for years, unavowed love between best friends, evil family etc.... but it ended feeling like a big missed opportunity for me.

The writing was decent but lacked finesse to really enliven the characters and the big drama happening around them. For me, the characters were nice and sympathetic, but they came across quite a bit as cardboard cutout characters with little real depth. And the way they never could sit down and really communicate important things drove me crazy. The overall plot was in theory very much appealing but its execution revealed lots of small plotholes that put together yanked me so often out of the story to question silly things. Which is not a good sign.

This was my first NM and after seeing her enticing titles around for years, I feel let down by this one. The ideas behind the story were very good but the end product unfortunately did not make the mark for me. I might try another one, but not in the foreseeable future.