Tristan has been Ally’s best friend since her first day in college. Tristan is a playboy that Ally loves as a friend, but she never attempted more. She knew she would only get her heart broken. Now four years later Ally has graduated and it it the last summer before she has to enter the real world and find a job. Tristan begs Ally to spend the summer as his fake girlfriend, so his mother will … quit pestering him about growing up and getting married. Ally agrees, but she never expected to start falling for Tristan against her better judgement.
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Wow –
This book is maybe a good rough draft but should absolutely not have gone to press in this shape.
Right off the bat, I wanted to put it down because of what is a clear lack of editing. There’s a distinct lack of punctuation―or I should clarify, proper punctuation―that makes it fairly hard to follow at times. However, I also couldn’t put it down. I wanted to see where it would go. I realized I had become a bit invested, so I read on, figuring I’d better give credit where credit is due.
However, then the continuity and character development spun out of control.
Tristan is repeatedly described as a womanizer by his best friend. Despite feeling he’s a womanizer, she begins to fool around with him. There’s a lot of back & forth, the two are understandably indecisive about how far to go because they do not want to ruin the friendship. This is painted very rocky, and juvenile but I can appreciate the situation.
The problem comes in where: Ally was never shown to have any sort of feelings for him, nor he for her, until hormones are raging and they’re groping each other. There’s no buildup, no feelings. It’s all very… formal?
But then all of a sudden each is clearly deeply in love with each other. Despite not showing this to the reader or getting any feelings across. So I accept the situation and keep reading… and it just goes around and around like this. It reads more like the characters are a couple of 5th graders, just coming into these kinds of feelings than the 20-somethings they are.
There’s another character, Parker, who one minute is cornering this girl, removing some of her clothing and creepily hitting on her. Previously labeled as a womanizer, he comes off so skeevy. The next, he’s this good guy, who she turns to for comfort, and who is casually kissed by him without objection, who takes care of her during a trying time… it’s just bizarre.
If the author would take the time to really develop these characters, give them distinct and individual personalities, she’d be onto something. However, she also needs to learn about continuity and exercise it in her novels. The around and around made my head spin and with as little time as I have to read for leisure these days, it needs to be less work.
Also―I strongly suggest she hire an editor and a proofreader. A good editor would never have let underdeveloped characters, plot holes and continuity issues like this slide and a proofreader would make up for the fact that she doesn’t know how to use punctuation, or when to use then versus than, things like that.
Price is definitely onto something here. The book takes place in a fun setting, has some drama, a good family dynamic, and some of the basic groundwork for lovable characters with some angst. If she were to put some effort into it, it could be great. As it is? Well, if the author couldn’t be bothered to put any effort into producing it, I’m not really sure how she can expect anyone to spend their time reading it.
Overall, I think the author has some potential but is in desperate need of a professional team to be involved with the production of her books. I’d check out more of her work, but with the hope that it was in much better shape than this novel. 2 stars.
Tristan and Ally have been friends for years, when Tristan talks Ally into pretending she his girlfriend so his my will get off his back. So a summer break at the beach pretending your best friend is your boyfriend. What could go wrong.