Sarah's Library

This review may contain spoilers

6/6 - The first 50% of this was a real struggle, there was just too much soccer (for those of you yelling "It's football!" at your screens, it's soccer in Australia, football is Aussie Rules/AFL and sometimes even rugby) and too much of Rey being an asshole. It's like he's never heard the expression 'first impressions count'. If I'd been in Sal's place our relationship wouldn't have gone past his insulting of my father and when she kept forgiving him for each subsequent incident I just wanted to shake some sense into her and slap some manners into him. I very nearly gave up, but I kept going because I DNFed our previous buddy read, The Royal We, and I didn't want to become 'the quitter' of the group (even if I was right in the middle of a very tense horror book that needs to go back to the library on the 8th). In the end I'm really glad I stuck with this one, the second half of the book made up for the tediousness of the first half. Unfortunately it couldn't make up for the editing mistakes I picked up throughout the story, which is why this isn't getting five stars from me. I found examples of everything from use of the wrong word, incorrect spelling, and bad grammar to the near indefensible (and completely illogical) use of the phrase 'I could have cared less' (on numerous occasions for all). On the up side the punctuation seemed to be pretty spot on.

If I'd known going in that this was going to be like 200 pages of the hero and heroine hating each other (or at least seeming to, from Sal's point of view) I don't think I would have joined the buddy read. That's just too much 'slow burn' for me, especially as it wasn't so much a case of 'slow burn' as it was a case of fiery dislike and insults. I really couldn't see how their opinions of each other were going to do such a radical 180, from distrust, disrespect, disgust and a whole lot of other dis- emotions to anything like love. I think I finally really started to enjoy the story when Rey went home with Sal to her parents' house and we got to see him out of his 'coach' persona. To be continued in the morning when I will go through some of the editing mistakes I caught...