A Bit of Me, Kent Lowe

With a good ending and characters that made me feel conflicted, there were some great aspects to the story that other readers obviously really enjoyed.  My enjoyment was a bit less however, because there was just too much conflict that felt forced, enhanced, and prolonged far beyond what was necessary.  It's like the fighting became the focus instead of the changes in the individuals and their relationship.  I didn't dislike the story, but I can't honestly say I loved it either.

George was so juvenile and whiny and immature and reactionary all. The. Time.  The first few pages were interesting because we could see someone who is young but clearly struggling with where life seemed to be taking him, his girlfriend, his friends, and then there was the slightly baffling interest in the young tattooed man across from him in the train.  There was a great start, but very quickly it was snuffed out by the rest of his pouting, lamenting, pining, and general ornery sullenness.  Combine that with his disrespect, drunken behavior, and the incessant moping and I was so very over him.  Only later in the story, much, much, much later, did he start to turn around and with the new softness that Jack brought out in him I could finally see some potential for him and them together.  Of course it wasn't something that lasted in the face of his all-too-frequent freakouts.

But thank goodness for a great grandmother.  She was pretty much the star of the book and I was incredibly interested in Aimee, but she kept getting shunted to the side with all of George's intentional avoidance of anything positive in his life for so long.  Without them I'd probably have skimmed a lot more of the story than I did.

The real conundrum was Jack.  He had an incredibly interesting and complicated past that bled profusely into his present and his situation was vastly more interesting than George's.  Except we didn't really get much of that.  His character was much more problematic and traumatic and the processing of all of that with the requisite healing that needed to happen for him to embrace some kind of future with George was so slow coming that I wasn't sure it would ever happen.

The course and transformation should have been the focus of both sides of the story, but we got mired in all the awful before the switch came, and when it did it happened too quickly to be truly believable.  The moment itself wasn't a bad one, it's just that it wasn't developed into something really transformative, something real and the mark of something that would build a foundation meant to last.  They were both still so young and getting their actual romance in nearly the end of the story wasn't satisfying enough.  So while their story wasn't bad, it was far too focused on the angst and wasn't given enough time to develop into something positive and loving enough to balance the heartache they both faced.

*$4.99 on Amazon