2 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Is She The One? is a romance story, and as the author puts it, “partly based in truth”. It is the first in a series and part of the next book is presented at the end of this one.
Bob is a real estate agent and on the lookout for love. His friend and co-worker Joel seems more interested in playing the field, and is trying to encourage Bob to do the same. On a “property listing” day, Bob meets a psychic at the house who tells him that The One will be appearing in his life soon. But how will Bob know that she is The One? A string of unsuccessful dates makes Bob question just what he wants from life and from a partner. Little does he know that Roxanne is just around the corner and waiting to explode into his life. Will this explosion be a good or bad one for Bob, and will she be The One?
Though not the main genre I love to read, I saw a 5-star review for the book and thought I’d take a peek. After all who doesn’t love a bit of romance every now and then? I must say that it was interesting reading about these types of questions and feelings from a male perspective. As women we tend to generalise men’s feelings and thoughts on the subjects of love and marriage, and not realise that they have very similar questions to what we have. I enjoyed Bob’s rollercoaster ride of emotions and his journey of self-discovery. Joel was an awful character (so I guess the author did his job there) and I couldn’t understand why Bob stayed friends with him. He was toxic and manipulative and all round unpleasant. Roxanne was certainly spicy though. She had no qualms about speaking her mind and tackling her problems head on. The peripheral characters were needed to round out the story, but didn’t have too much of an impact.
Unfortunately I failed to see why the 5-stars were given in the review. I appreciate the fact that the author tried to inject humour into the story, but there were definitely no laugh out loud moments for me. In fact I felt the humour was somewhat forced. I understood what the author was trying to portray with the character’s emotions, but more often than not their actions or speech came across as silly and sometimes juvenile. The writing itself felt a bit stilted and blocky, with info dumps being thrown in to create scenes. There were only a couple of editing mistakes in punctuation and spelling though, which I commend the author on.
The book itself is quick to read and only took me a little over an hour to get through. I had to think very carefully about the rating and how I would allocate stars. No star was removed for grammatical errors, but I had to take one away for the writing style and one for the story itself, as even though deep issues were dealt with, I didn’t feel a connection with any of the characters or their situations. I didn’t feel the book could stand in the 3-star category as it was one that was not memorable enough, and I won’t be buying the sequel. I thus rate Is She The One? 2 out of 4 stars and recommend it only for someone who has a bit of time on their hands and is looking for a light read.
******
Is She The One?
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Like Jax14's review? Post a comment saying so!
