The Story of You and Me

by Pamela Dumond

[violetpeanut]

POV: First-person through the main character, Sophie
Insta-Love: No Love Triangle: No
Cliffhanger: No

Sophie has MS and travels to LA to participate in a stem cell therapy trial. She can't drive and so hires Alejandro (Alex) to drive her around. It's an idea that has not been overused and has so much potential to be hopeful and poignant and a real tear jerker. Sadly, it is none of those things.

Characters:
From the very beginning, I never really connected with Sophie. She's supposed to be this innocent midwestern girl with a lot of gumption who moves to the big city by herself. Instead, she comes off as a girl who thinks she knows it all and does really really stupid things. She's a damsel in distress more than once and the situations she's in are totally of her own making. There are multiple scenes where she refers to how great she is at controlling or rebuffing "Alpha boys." Those scenes really grated on my nerves, too, because most of what she did or said made no sense. Many of the things Sophie says and does are very immature. Her character is much more YA than NA.

On the other hand, I really liked Alejandro. He was sweet and kind and had a great head on his shoulders. Sophie refers to him repeatedly as an "Alpha" boy but I didn't get that at all. He wasn't overpowering or domineering. I could not, for the life of me, figure out why the heck he was so attracted to Sophie. Alex is definitely a swoon-worthy book boyfriend.

Dialogue:
This is one of my biggest problems with this book. I love witty banter between a great couple. I didn't find that between Sophie and Alex. Some of the things said didn't seem to make sense and there never seemed to be a great flow between them.

Plot and Pacing:
The general storyline is a good one. Sophie travels around LA looking for alternative therapies to deal with her MS. Alex drives her around and acts as her protector since she's new to the city and some of the places she needs to go are not in the nicest neighborhoods. She tries everything from massage to acupuncture to vision quests. I enjoyed reading about these and about the growing closeness between Sophie and Alex. There was an awful lot that I didn't like, though. Sophie seems to get in a lot of sticky situations and there always seem to be strangers nearby willing to help her. Many of these situations seemed a little too convenient. There were certain events that seemed to be thrown in just to spice things up instead of to really add anything to the plot and things were wrapped up a little too neatly in the end. Although, if you're a fan of HEA's, you'll probably love that. I like a happy ending, but only when they're realistically so.

Romance:
The romance between Alex and Sophie seems to develop naturally. They are attracted to one another from the start but not in an overpowering "I must jump his/her bones right now" kind of way. They feel each other out and Alex tries to court her a little with these really cute gifts and gestures. They each have a secret. We know what Sophie's is and it's not hard to guess what Alex's is. There's no huge drama or hurt feelings over lies or deceit. They both come clean when the time is right. That was refreshing. There are no explicit scenes really. Any physical stuff is pretty PG-13.

Overall:
I almost quite reading this book more than once. I really only continued because it was a pretty quick read, and by the time I was really fed up I was 90% done. I give this two stars instead of just one because there were some parts that I enjoyed, the romance was sweet and the general idea was good. I did not like or connect to Sophie even though every single person she meets in the book loves her on sight. I found her immature and the situations she gets herself into were borderline ridiculous. I also feel that the dialogue had a tendency to be a little jarring and didn't flow well. I was irritated and frustrated throughout most of the book. This just wasn't for me. There are a whole lot of 4 and 5 star reviews out there, though, so if you're a fan of romance, you may like this more than I did.