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haley_j_casey 's review for:
Love Unscripted
by Tina Reber
1.5 stars? I've only ever given a couple one-star reviews, and I hated every second of those books, so I have a hard time ranking this one that low. The two-page scene where Taryn was FURIOUS with Ryan to the point of hanging up on him and ignoring him honestly boosted the rating. More honest emotion in that scene than I'd seen. But then it ended.
Me, right now:
While reading:
Honestly. So far this book is killing me.
I want to like it SO MUCH. It has a higher-than-four-star average rating, the description sounds sweet and fun and intriguing.
It's not.
I'm only like a quarter of the way through the book, and because I own it I feel like I have to finish it, but oh my Lord. As an author, Tina Reber is using an over abundance of description, figurative language, and exclamation points. Every character is smiley and smirky about EVERYTHING. And Reber constantly has the characters doing something, describes all the action in every scene, and then tells the reader exactly why everyone did what they did. The whole point of being a reader is to know why a certain action happened. You don't have to explain every single thing. Nor repeat it again and again and again. Taryn (the main character) has the same conversation with different people two or three or four times, just in case the reader wasn't there the first time it happened.
And then there was the overuse of words like "seductively", "passionately", "yelled", "quipped", "enjoying myself/himself/themselves", "it made me happy/sad", etc. Adjectives and adverbs and the like are not necessary after everything you write. Sometimes simple is good, summary is good.
Then there are the characters. Very few have real depth, and even the ones that kind of do... Not so much. We get it, Taryn had her heart broken time and time again, so it's hard for her to trust and love. Okay. But that doesn't mean she and her "soul mate" Ryan Christensen have to have EVERYTHING in common, from favorite music and movies and hobbies and senses of humor and outlooks on life. I could go on. Taryn herself is actually irritating me, because she has the whole "I'm a nobody who has been hurt to many times, I cannot and will not be loved or love or trust ever again" thing going. But in the meantime she is the perfect guy's girl who apparently can do anything: grill, design kitchens and outdoor patio spaces and build them herself, fish, boat, watch football, run a pub, mix drinks, play guitar, play piano, be rich, own wineries and catering companies, cook lobster, make stained glass. So why has it NEVER worked out with any guy, ever? It's a mystery.
I just... ARGH. I want to just like it, but it's pissing me off!!
And I'm still determined to finish this book. We'll see...
Still while reading, just a little later:
I CONSTANTLY want to yell at these characters
Add "sniffle" to the list of words that the author needs to stop using.
Taryn has TERRIBLE taste in men, in the past. What the hell was she thinking?
Ryan needs to stop crying.
I think so far that Taryn and Ryan had known each other for about two weeks before they started dating, which has been another two or so weeks. Right now, the two are completely in love, are moving in together, are talking about exactly what their house would look like 'if' they bought one and where they should live to accommodate Ryan's life, and are having pretty much completely unprotected sex (which they are unconcerned with).
I'm not saying people can't fall in love in a month—I believe they can—just not like this...
Still. Reading.
So now... Still no. I find myself just staring at the page sometimes.
You did not just say that/think that/do that/stop crying/get over it/be a man/woman/suck it up/ you're not as funny as you think/that's not sexy/you've been apart for an hour calm down/it's not that scary/stop getting mad over ridiculous things/but if you're going to be mad then stay mad for more than two seconds
And, like I said before, I want to like it. I want to be able to give a better review or at least have something positive to say. Because I know it would suck to see a review like this about my book. But I physically CAN NOT. Not 500 pages into the same thing over and over again.
Finished.
So. So, so, so... I think I've made how I feel about this book pretty clear. The characters seemed nearly bipolar at times, tearing up every other scene, getting in fights and forgetting about them just as quickly. They didn't seem to develop so much as we just learned new things about them. I think that was a lot of what bothered me; there was very little growth. And they kept rehashing the same issues over and over
As a writer, I know how much heart and time and emotion goes into books and characters. But the writing here took away from the story so much for me. Things were repeated and over-explained and cliched and forced so often that I couldn't get past it, and it made the characters and drama seem very one-dimensional. But I can't put a book down once I pick it up, and this is one I own (maybe should have gotten it from the library instead), so I pushed through. Made it to the end. Finished.
Me, right now:
While reading:
Honestly. So far this book is killing me.
I want to like it SO MUCH. It has a higher-than-four-star average rating, the description sounds sweet and fun and intriguing.
It's not.
I'm only like a quarter of the way through the book, and because I own it I feel like I have to finish it, but oh my Lord. As an author, Tina Reber is using an over abundance of description, figurative language, and exclamation points. Every character is smiley and smirky about EVERYTHING. And Reber constantly has the characters doing something, describes all the action in every scene, and then tells the reader exactly why everyone did what they did. The whole point of being a reader is to know why a certain action happened. You don't have to explain every single thing. Nor repeat it again and again and again. Taryn (the main character) has the same conversation with different people two or three or four times, just in case the reader wasn't there the first time it happened.
And then there was the overuse of words like "seductively", "passionately", "yelled", "quipped", "enjoying myself/himself/themselves", "it made me happy/sad", etc. Adjectives and adverbs and the like are not necessary after everything you write. Sometimes simple is good, summary is good.
Then there are the characters. Very few have real depth, and even the ones that kind of do... Not so much. We get it, Taryn had her heart broken time and time again, so it's hard for her to trust and love. Okay. But that doesn't mean she and her "soul mate" Ryan Christensen have to have EVERYTHING in common, from favorite music and movies and hobbies and senses of humor and outlooks on life. I could go on. Taryn herself is actually irritating me, because she has the whole "I'm a nobody who has been hurt to many times, I cannot and will not be loved or love or trust ever again" thing going. But in the meantime she is the perfect guy's girl who apparently can do anything: grill, design kitchens and outdoor patio spaces and build them herself, fish, boat, watch football, run a pub, mix drinks, play guitar, play piano, be rich, own wineries and catering companies, cook lobster, make stained glass. So why has it NEVER worked out with any guy, ever? It's a mystery.
I just... ARGH. I want to just like it, but it's pissing me off!!
And I'm still determined to finish this book. We'll see...
Still while reading, just a little later:
I CONSTANTLY want to yell at these characters
Add "sniffle" to the list of words that the author needs to stop using.
Taryn has TERRIBLE taste in men, in the past. What the hell was she thinking?
Ryan needs to stop crying.
I think so far that Taryn and Ryan had known each other for about two weeks before they started dating, which has been another two or so weeks. Right now, the two are completely in love, are moving in together, are talking about exactly what their house would look like 'if' they bought one and where they should live to accommodate Ryan's life, and are having pretty much completely unprotected sex (which they are unconcerned with).
I'm not saying people can't fall in love in a month—I believe they can—just not like this...
Still. Reading.
So now... Still no. I find myself just staring at the page sometimes.
You did not just say that/think that/do that/stop crying/get over it/be a man/woman/suck it up/ you're not as funny as you think/that's not sexy/you've been apart for an hour calm down/it's not that scary/stop getting mad over ridiculous things/but if you're going to be mad then stay mad for more than two seconds
And, like I said before, I want to like it. I want to be able to give a better review or at least have something positive to say. Because I know it would suck to see a review like this about my book. But I physically CAN NOT. Not 500 pages into the same thing over and over again.
Finished.
So. So, so, so... I think I've made how I feel about this book pretty clear. The characters seemed nearly bipolar at times, tearing up every other scene, getting in fights and forgetting about them just as quickly. They didn't seem to develop so much as we just learned new things about them. I think that was a lot of what bothered me; there was very little growth. And they kept rehashing the same issues over and over
As a writer, I know how much heart and time and emotion goes into books and characters. But the writing here took away from the story so much for me. Things were repeated and over-explained and cliched and forced so often that I couldn't get past it, and it made the characters and drama seem very one-dimensional. But I can't put a book down once I pick it up, and this is one I own (maybe should have gotten it from the library instead), so I pushed through. Made it to the end. Finished.