*ARC REVIEW*
Please note that this book was provided for free by the author's publishing PR in exchange for an honest review. Feel free to check out my full book review policy here for more details.
Oh man. I can’t believe that I’m saying this but I didn’t enjoy this book. I thought I would love it having adored the first one in the series but I think that the problems I had with it just overwhelmed me to the point where I couldn’t enjoy it too much at all.
I try to be positive about books and in keeping with that theme I’m going reveal what I could have done without in this book and what I actually liked.
Ok, negatives first. The premise of the book just didn’t work for me. It was so clear to me who between Tate and Quinn was at fault for the breakdown in their relationship and I just didn’t see the need for the person who, in my view, hadn’t done anything wrong, to beg for the other person to take them back. I found myself so confused by this as I was reading. It felt like such an unnecessary difficulty that I just didn’t see the need for all the groveling and begging that happened in the book.
Oh man. I can’t believe that I’m saying this but I didn’t enjoy this book. I thought I would love it having adored the first one in the series but I think that the problems I had with it just overwhelmed me to the point where I couldn’t enjoy it too much at all.
I try to be positive about books and in keeping with that theme I’m going reveal what I could have done without in this book and what I actually liked.
Ok, negatives first. The premise of the book just didn’t work for me. It was so clear to me who between Tate and Quinn was at fault for the breakdown in their relationship and I just didn’t see the need for the person who, in my view, hadn’t done anything wrong, to beg for the other person to take them back. I found myself so confused by this as I was reading. It felt like such an unnecessary difficulty that I just didn’t see the need for all the groveling and begging that happened in the book.
I also struggled with the editing. Now, I have to point out that I received an ARC and of course not all the editing is done at that point but I think it didn’t help my reading experience that I had to keep adding in words to the passages so they made sense or that I had to keep stopping to go back and make sure that I read things right. I am hopeful that this was just a bug with the ARC and won’t be the same for the finished work.
Because I struggled with the premise, I didn’t find Quinn to be a sympathetic character. I found her to be sort of selfish and immature at times (she's 28!) and that also made it hard for me to get stuck into the novel. I felt like I wasn’t rooting for her so much as I was rooting for Tate who wanted to be with her.
So, on to the positives. I love the Kings of Castle Beach. I feel like there are so many more great stories to tell. Like what’s going on between Barron and Wren? And what about poor Ophelia? In a book where I didn’t necessarily love the leading lady there were plenty of other characters to love! I enjoyed the cameos from Campbell and Knight and loved the continuation of their story as a family.
I thought the issue of survivor’s guilt was tackled really admirably and there was a part of me that felt all sorts of sad for Quinn when she was going through it. I also thought it was so admirable how she took on the role of the care taker but also how that tied into trying to assuage her guilt. The way she tried to compensate for not being there the one time it felt like it mattered by being there all the time now felt really realistic to me.
Overall this was a disheartening 3 star read to me. That being said I love this series and will be coming back to Castle Beach in the hope that Ms Valentine has a great one in store for me when I return.
TK MAJ
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