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A review by blurrypetals
The Closer You Come by Gena Showalter
4.0
Even though she's a very prolific and rather popular writer, I hadn't read a single word of Gena Showalter's until late 2016, when I finally got my hands on the audiobook of Firstlife. I haven't exactly known where to go from there, which books of hers I should read next because I loved that book so much and, because I'm known to dip into a romance novel or ten every once in a while, I thought it would be fun to jump right out of the sci-fi YA puddle and splash into the romance puddle since they were so wildly different.
I can't say I enjoyed this nearly as much as I've enjoyed the Everlife series so far, but it was actually really fun to, so to speak, willingly give myself tonal whiplash.
I've been really digging the contemporaries and romances this month so far (the only book I've DNF'd in 2018 thus far was a fantasy and I think I may need to give that book a second chance because I think I just wasn't ready to jump into a fantasy yet) and I've been reading them QUICKLY so it's been a lot of the same ideas and tropes over and over again, which is my only deal with so many of these romances, even if they're written by talented authors, it just seems like so many of them are hitting these checklists. Is the girl poor? Check. Is the guy cagey about something dark from his past? Check. Do they play a cat and mouse game so they don't get together too quickly?Check. And so on and so forth.
One thing I did like about this book is that, even though it did have a lot of those cliches, it did them well and, just like with the Everlife books, even though it's familiar, it's still fun because, at the end of the day, Showalter is talented at using tropes and cliches to her advantage, even if they're also her disadvantage in a way.
When I first started writing this review, I put this at a 3/5 but, like I said, there really isn't anything fundamentally wrong with this book and I had a really good time listening to it, so I'm bumping it up to a 4/5, because why not?
I can't say I enjoyed this nearly as much as I've enjoyed the Everlife series so far, but it was actually really fun to, so to speak, willingly give myself tonal whiplash.
I've been really digging the contemporaries and romances this month so far (the only book I've DNF'd in 2018 thus far was a fantasy and I think I may need to give that book a second chance because I think I just wasn't ready to jump into a fantasy yet) and I've been reading them QUICKLY so it's been a lot of the same ideas and tropes over and over again, which is my only deal with so many of these romances, even if they're written by talented authors, it just seems like so many of them are hitting these checklists. Is the girl poor? Check. Is the guy cagey about something dark from his past? Check. Do they play a cat and mouse game so they don't get together too quickly?Check. And so on and so forth.
One thing I did like about this book is that, even though it did have a lot of those cliches, it did them well and, just like with the Everlife books, even though it's familiar, it's still fun because, at the end of the day, Showalter is talented at using tropes and cliches to her advantage, even if they're also her disadvantage in a way.
When I first started writing this review, I put this at a 3/5 but, like I said, there really isn't anything fundamentally wrong with this book and I had a really good time listening to it, so I'm bumping it up to a 4/5, because why not?