EBookObsessed
Written on Mar 15, 2015
I have seen the name Grace Burrowes many, many times but haven't had a chance to read anything by her. This book grabbed my interest but it couldn't hold it.
To start, I wasn't all that excited about the characters. Mac has a deep dark secret that has kept him from dating. It turns out he can't have children (I don't know how he knew this) and he didn't think it was fair to date anyone who would think they could someday have a family. I thought the whole reason behind why he doesn't date didn't make any sense. You have more than a couple dates and find you really like someone, then put it out there and let them decide if you problem is too much for them. He becomes very interested in Sidonie when she says she can't have kids, and we find out that it was because she enjoyed a lot of sex with a lot of different people in college. It didn't make sense, but I didn't care enough to look up her medical condition.
As far as Sidonie, I didn't connect with her as a character and I didn't understand her interest in adopting Luis since she never knew where he was, what he was doing or what, if anything, he has eaten. They buy this farm (which turns out to be Mac's childhood home) and Luis gets interested in taking care of these two horses which were left behind by the prior owner. He is taking care of the horses and fixing up the stables. When Mac asks Sidonie if she has seen everything Luis has done down there at the barn, she says "no, haven't gone down there." How do you know your teenaged, inner city kid isn't in the barn doing drugs or making a meth lab, if you aren't watching what he does all afternoon. He also comes home from school and has PB&J or mac and cheese and she's calling that dinner. She is an awful foster parent.
Even the social worker is presented as an uncaring woman who just wants to get Luis off her list and figures sending him back to the foster system would be the best bet to ease her schedule, rather than concerning herself with his well-being. She causes a problem because there is an old outhouse on the property and it is a danger so that Luis might need to be taken away from Sidonie. He's a teenager, not a toddler. You can just board up the door and say, "hey, Luis, don't go in there or you might fall into a hole full of old poop." I am sure he won't bother with it.
What I found most irritating about the story is the way they both spoke. I have a problem with characters speaking normally for the period they are in. You can't give me Lord of the Rings with modern slang and you can't write a story about average modern Americans who sound like they stepped out of a regency novel. They were very stiff in their characters but Mac seemed like he should have been more of a laid back, cowboy type.
This whole story rubbed me wrong but I seem to be among the minority since it has a lot of 5 star reviews.