This is my first DNF for the year and I have put this author on my not at any price list. The cover is cute, so I requested it from Netgalley. This is an honest review. I wish I had paid more attention to the description, it might have saved me some heartache.
Henry only needed to fix the leaky office pipes. So, when a crazy woman barges in and turns his day upside down, then confesses all her secrets like a challenge, he faces two choices: Tell her he’s not the man she’s looking for, or roll with it.
Rachel knows there’s something amiss about her new shrink—he’s far too handsome for starters—but she’s desperate to straighten her life out. With only three weeks to find a date for her cousin’s wedding, she’s willing to try anything. Even rely on a complete stranger to help her find love.
The fake therapist device is not appealing to me, but I tried. I really tried. Despite the fact that I didn’t make it past the second chapter, I truly did try. Where did the problems start? with the very first sentence.
As much as I enjoy watching a man play with his tool, are you sure you should be doing that?
This is the opening line. It’s what Rachel says to the man she thinks is her new therapist, a man trying to repair a radiator which is filled with scalding hot water. She surprises him, causing him to lose his grip on a wrench and his crotch is sprayed with scalding hot water. Her response to him being burned is to give him an I-told-you-so look and tell him he looks like he pissed his pants. I hate Rachel. She is an awful person with no boundaries, no compassion and no sense that the way she moves through the world affects anyone other than her.
But don’t worry, Henry is just as bad. Even before he decides not to tell her she’s in the wrong place, he tells us he thinks this is a prank in retaliation for making his brother’s girlfriend think he was cheating. Who does that? Who thinks that’s funny? And then he decides to keep pretending he is a therapist.
So that was chapter one.
At this point, I went on Amazon to see what reviewers were saying. It had a one star rating calling it an excuse to write porn and then a bunch of 4 and 5 star reviews that made me concerned for the rest of the book. A couple of people said they started laughing and didn’t stop. I don’t like those people either. Personally, I would rather read porn than what I had read so far. I decided to press of and at least write a review that articulates why this is a bad book. I moved on to chapter two.
Two things happened in chapter two that made me realize that life is too short and I don’t have to read more to know I’m not going to like this book. Rachel is having hot chocolate with her cousin and best friend Cassy. Cassy is a bitch, and not a fun bitch either.
I knew the shade well. The lipstick had been mine for all of five minutes, a gift my mom sent from Paris. She’d picked it up as a joke and said it reminded her of how red my face became when I blushed. Cassy watched me sign for it, unwrap it, try it on, and then told me it made me look like a cheap whore. Mumbling something akin to waste not; want not, she wrapped it in her bony little fist and shoved it into her purse. She wore it to annoy me.
So she tells her cousin she looks like a whore, steals her lipstick and wears it to annoy her. Why would I want to spend more time with these people. They are all the villain.
The other little nugget of bullshit in the second chapter is the author working in a little side of fat shaming.
I took a sip of my hot chocolate and relished the way it coated my mouth in sweet silk before flowing warmly down my throat, straight to my hips and ass.
A few reviewers mentioned that they appreciated the “curvy girl” representation on the cover of Somebody to Love. No thank you. I can do without this particular flavor of “representation.”
And that’s it. That’s all I could take. Maybe they all learn from their mistakes and become better people. I don’t care.
