In The Dark by Sally Eggert

In The Dark
by Sally Eggert
Rating: 2 of 5 stars

My Review:
Sad to say, I just couldn't read this whole book. It dragged and dragged and dragged. I knew within 30 pages who was the good guy and the bad guy. And I was so upset that the heroine asked no questions and really didn't care about finding out anything. She was simply Too Stupid To Live, in my mind. I felt like I read for ages and was only 17% through the book.

I liked the writing enough that I couldn't just leave the story altogether, so I skimmed a lot and read the last 30 pages too. I felt the descriptions and mullings went on for a really long time without anything interesting happening. As I skimmed, I'd find pages and pages where the heroine doesn't speak with anyone and seemingly just ruminates on how she really doesn't want to be a part of life. Not that she was exactly depressed (or maybe she was), but everyone fit into a spot in her head and she didn't care to find out if her assumptions were correct.

Josie just floats along, not wanting anything too hard. In her head, she just doesn't want to deal with anything serious in life. I could understand some of it to start with. She can barely handle that Johnny might be anything other than a sex buddy. She's so closed off - no friends, no family, no ties at all. Do your job, keep your head down, don't look up or look around. The descriptions show this. It seemed like no names, faces, no distinguishing features to pretty much anything.

But that part wasn't what bothered me. It's when she gets the shot of adrenaline that she can't look the other way anymore, so she calls the guy on the business card (ba-du-dum). She seems so wishy-washy to me. She really feels strong and like she belongs when she's working at the bar, but as soon as there's the possibility that a “big, important guy” could just take care of her, she's ready to jump on it even if she doesn't know anything about him. I wanted to shout at Josie “why would you trust this guy just because he said he worked in the same building?” It's like she says I'll just call him up and turn in whatever I can to him with no verification or anything. Why would you be that trusting of “the agency” still? The agency almost got her killed and yet as soon as anything comes up, she's still willing to do whatever. PTSD be damned, she'll put up with whatever she has to.

We're never in anyone else's head to get a different perspective on events, so the whole time when I'm thinking uh-oh, spooky music, why would you go into the house by yourself, poor stupid horror flick bimbo?! thoughts, there's no other balancing view points.

I don't often read romantic suspense, so I don't know if this is normal, but it was all so confusing to me. Nothing is really named or out in the open. I mean, I knew who the bad guy was right away, and the good guy was too vaguely good to really be bad. But the company is just “the agency”, no word on what it actually does. No clear information about why she was almost killed, just her boyfriend was asked to give up the names and he refused.

I'm sure there would be people that would like this book. I would guess a lot of the elements are par-for-the-course of romantic suspense. But it just didn't do it for me. If it weren't for the Too Stupid To Live factor, I probably would have read the whole thing, because I enjoyed the writing style. But I guess romantic suspense is probably not my genre for now.

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

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.