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A review by areniamar
Beach Happens by Jamie K. Schmidt
3.0
Fine, but missing that “oomph”
First of all, I have to say that this was a pretty good Hawai‘i-based story by an author that as far as I know, has not lived in the islands. I can tell the author did a lot of research into Maui and even into pidgin, which I appreciate. That being said, some of the Hawaiian words were still spelled incorrectly and some of the phrasing was a bit cringey as it wasn’t always quite the way a local would say it, but again, she still got a lot right and the effort was clearly there. So kudos to the author.
Character-wise, Michaela and Marcus were pretty good. Both had some nice backstory and they felt like real characters. The side characters, however, didn’t really do anything for me and I got a little mixed up at times because none of them really had a large presence.
Unfortunately, however, I didn’t really feel the connection between our two MCs. I don’t know…this is weird because technically the author was checking off all the things you need to write a romance and a story in general, but the whole time everything just felt really flat. I think it may just be the author’s writing style? I’m not sure. But I was pretty bored and kind of reading it just to read it.
It doesn’t help that the climax was virtually non-existent. Like there’s a whole subplot with Tetsuo and the hotel and we don’t see any of that get resolved! There’s also no gotcha moment at the end with her ex, so that was also really anticlimactic. I also don’t like that Michaela basically gave in at the end—it didn’t feel like she had any character growth at all.
As for spice, it was really mild. All of the sex scenes are open-door, but the first two are pretty brief and mild. You get a lengthier one towards the end, but I didn’t find it very interesting. Again, maybe I’m just not jiving with the author’s writing style?
All in all, it was a fine read and I appreciate the author’s efforts here, but tbh, I’ll probably forget this in a week.
First of all, I have to say that this was a pretty good Hawai‘i-based story by an author that as far as I know, has not lived in the islands. I can tell the author did a lot of research into Maui and even into pidgin, which I appreciate. That being said, some of the Hawaiian words were still spelled incorrectly and some of the phrasing was a bit cringey as it wasn’t always quite the way a local would say it, but again, she still got a lot right and the effort was clearly there. So kudos to the author.
Character-wise, Michaela and Marcus were pretty good. Both had some nice backstory and they felt like real characters. The side characters, however, didn’t really do anything for me and I got a little mixed up at times because none of them really had a large presence.
Unfortunately, however, I didn’t really feel the connection between our two MCs. I don’t know…this is weird because technically the author was checking off all the things you need to write a romance and a story in general, but the whole time everything just felt really flat. I think it may just be the author’s writing style? I’m not sure. But I was pretty bored and kind of reading it just to read it.
It doesn’t help that the climax was virtually non-existent. Like there’s a whole subplot with Tetsuo and the hotel and we don’t see any of that get resolved! There’s also no gotcha moment at the end with her ex, so that was also really anticlimactic. I also don’t like that Michaela basically gave in at the end—it didn’t feel like she had any character growth at all.
As for spice, it was really mild. All of the sex scenes are open-door, but the first two are pretty brief and mild. You get a lengthier one towards the end, but I didn’t find it very interesting. Again, maybe I’m just not jiving with the author’s writing style?
All in all, it was a fine read and I appreciate the author’s efforts here, but tbh, I’ll probably forget this in a week.