Recent Read

On the Rocks by Sawyer Bennett

Genre: Contemporary/Young Adult

Steam Level:  not to bad, not to bad at all

My Thoughts: If anyone is a regular follower of my reviews, they might think all the books I read are either 4's or 5's with a very rare 3. Alas, this is not the case. I'm only giving this one a 2. There is a BUT I will get to later though. This the story of Hunter Markham, a world class surfer and Gabby Ward, a young contractor who took over her fathers business when he died. Gabby has been lifelong best friends with his sister Casey and has been crushing on Hunter for years. She made a move on him a few years previously but he shut her down and at the start of the book she is still very angry and very cold to him.

But he has feelings for her now that she's all grown up and when she bids on a job to refurbish a local bar and wins it, they are forced to work together and the sparks fly.

The author writes in a very unusual style. She writes in the present tense and in the first person. Each chapter is in either Gabby's voice or in Hunters. Normally I would run far away from this, both because of the tense and the first person, but for the most part the author makes it work and this, oddly enough, isn't one of the reasons the book doesn't work for me at all. The biggest reason is I can't stand Gabby. Ugh, just ugh. She makes one stupid decision after the other based on her feelings. She's mad at hunter so she will toss away the chance to renovate, she decides not to tell her best friend she's banging her brother, knowing it will hurt Stacey when she finds out about Gabby and Hunter. She wants to keep their relationship a secret for no good reason I could figure. She's immature and just plain stupid and I did not like spending half the book in her head. And she calls her friends "bestie". For Pete's sake, that's what Amy Farrah Fowler calls Penny in The Big Bang Theory. In the show it's funny, in this book it's stupid and annoying.

I also thought the book had too many very descriptive sex scenes. Now despite what my sisters say, they do it to annoy me, not because it's true, I am NOT a prude and love a well written sex scene or three. But this book was on overkill. Enough already I thought a few times. We get it. Back to Abby, for a minute, she was, well, not to sound like a prude 'cause I'm not, but I'm going to sound like it, she has a potty mouth and a potty brain. She describes what she and Hunter do as the F bombing. I get that the guys in many of these books "think" that way, but when the heroine does, I find it rather offensive. So in no uncertain terms I did not like this book. I liked Hunter quite a bit but Abby ruined it.

But I mentioned there was a but and here it comes. I read another book by this author and really enjoyed it so I know she can write books I enjoy, she just didn't do it with this one. And Hunter has a twin brother who spent five years in jail and I wanted very much to read his story, so I did want to finish this one so I could read brother Brody's book. Which I am reading right now and liking.

So there you have it. A low grade for a book I did not like but I'm reading the next one and glad to be doing so.

Grade: 2 out of 5

'til later