Once Perfect

by Cecy Robson

[EBookObsessed]

A week after I finished this story, I am still not sure how I feel about it. I was definitely intrigued by the characters and the story line, but I haven’t made up my mind yet how much I liked the characters and what my interest would be to read any other books in the series. Cecy Robson tells a slightly dark tale where neither wealth, poverty nor social standing determine the person you are.

Orphaned and abandoned after her father commits suicide over an embezzlement scandal, former rich girl Evelyn Preston now has to struggle to make ends meet while waitressing at a local college bar and studying to get a degree in nursing.

Evelyn seems to be very introverted and sheltered for a girl who grew up mega rich. She has a hard time making friends because she spent most of her youth with the type of friends who want to be with you because of who you are, not because they like you. She also had a boyfriend pre-selected by her father and his parents as a good social match. Donovan and his family also abandoned Evelyn after the scandal. We get all this in dribs and drabs until a big reveal of all the secrets that Evelyn is hiding at the end of the story.

To begin the story, Evelyn doesn’t really socialize with her co-workers and she keeps herself apart from them. She is intrigued yet afraid of the attractive and built Mateo who is the head bouncer at the club. She knows that Mateo was in prison for a time for beating a man. So although she is intrigued, she avoids contact, even eye contact, with Mateo even though he is kind to Evelyn and the other people in the bar. It isn’t until his friend explains that Mateo went to prison for beating the man who raped his baby sister does Evelyn look past his conviction to see the man behind tattoos, and give herself an opportunity to get to know him. Even though Mateo and Evelyn begin to date, I kept feeling like she was holding herself back from the relationship. A feeling that even Mateo felt since he kept wondering if she wanted to walk away.

Mateo and Evie definitely came from different economic worlds. Mateo withdraws a bit from Evie when he sees the mansion that she grow up in. He sees the wealth she once knew but forgets the simple fact that Evelyn is remaking herself and forging her own way and she seems to be okay with that. Not only is there a financial difference in their lives but they also had different cultural upbringings. Because of this, Evie (and myself) didn’t understand why Mateo allowed his father to beat on his sisters and himself. Mateo is a trained MMA fighter. He could have fought back and the father would have thought twice before getting violent. The explanation in the story is that Cubans never hit their elders. Apparently, it was accepted that their father who all but abandoned them could get drunk or stoned and beat them bloody, but not to protect yourself from this abuse. No fighting back. No Order of Protection. No calling the police. This leads to both Mateo and his sister pushing away their significant others so they didn’t need to be subjected to their family violence.

Mateo was very much the gentle giant, when he is not fighting in the ring. He was very attracted to Evelyn but he understood that she had some issues and acted very gentlemanly with her and didn’t push the relationship with her and was always willing to pull back if he overwhelmed her. He was thoughtful and protective of his sister and Evie which just leads to more confusion as to why he was so accepting of his father’s violence.

THOUGHTS:
I enjoyed the story, but I feel that Cecy Robson skimmed over a lot of questions and didn’t let us get to know all about these characters. I don’t know whether there are answers we will get in future stories.

When Evelyn finally gives us all the details of her past, it creates a gap between her and Mateo and I never felt 100 percent right about them after that. We never get the whole story behind his sister’s rape or anything about Mateo being in prison. There was a lot of “I don’t want to talk about it” moments. I felt like they all held some part of themselves back.

There was something about this story that kept me from connecting with these characters and I am all about the characters in a story.

Overall, it was an absorbing story and I liked it but I just didn’t love it.

Received an ARC from the author in exchange for an honest review.