Hard To Handle

Hard To Handle
by Jessica Lemmon
Rating: Did Not Finish, 1 of 5 stars


My Review:
It's really hard for me to give reviews this low, but I've tried to get through this one, three times now and somehow I just can't force myself to do it. I didn't care for the writing style and then on top of that the characters just bugged me a lot. They're whiny, irritating and totally unable to make me care about them except for the desire to slap them. Eventually I skipped to the end and read the last 20 pages just to see if it got better and I'd believe their happily ever after and then start caring about the rest. Didn't work, I was still irritated with them at the end.


I don't even know what world Sadie's living in. She dresses provocatively and yet she's so modest and fragile. The idea behind those things being explicitly stated, leaves me feeling like the book is trying to pigeon-hole Sadie into a whore/virgin dichotomy instead of just letting her be a self-assured heroine. See, Aiden is attracted to her because of the way she dresses, but he's MORE attracted because she's really so modest and fragile – because in Aiden-land, if she weren't modest and fragile, she wouldn't be as worthy of the small amount of manly respect that he gives her. In fact, if she weren't so secretly modest and fragile, I think he would have lost interest and moved on. In his manly world, he's only interested in her still because he hadn't gotten into her pants before.


Aiden is sort-of trying to win Sadie back, but he's manipulative, unapologetic and your basic whiny brat. He behaves like a spoiled child and instead of walking away, Sadie just sits and cries about it. I swear these two had the emotional intelligence of toddlers. Sadie has every right to be angry with Aiden for the way he treated her but mostly she's just whiny and pitiful. Like even after a year away from him, she's still throwing herself a pity-party.


Plus there's Sadie's business sense that just seems to be missing. She's the second best salesperson at this company, but somehow she managed to put this whole huge amount of stuff into the contract that was just signed. Including things like she will personally buy up all the competitor's stock from the store if it doesn't sell. Seems a bit shady and even more confusing to know that someone else at the company's legal department supposedly vetted it and put all the details together.


I swear, it felt like the book was trying to prove how Sadie was nothing important without Aiden. Like she's just too “feminine” and “emotional” to live her life on her own. She needs someone big and manly like Aiden to take care of her because she's just too fragile by herself. Even if it's an emotionally abusive, manly man who runs off and angrily pouts if he's told “no”.


Bottom line, these two really needed to get away from each other and grow up on their own. Maybe after they matured, they could think about having a relationship. But for right now, they don't work together in a healthy way and I didn't care enough about them to slough through the
whole book for an ending that still felt manipulative and co-dependent.



I received a complementary ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.