Image consultant Caroline Parker is has been out for revenge against Joshua Martin since she was in high school. Josh has had the hots for her since high school when he was her younger brother's best friend. Caroline always thought he was just one of her brother's geek friends and wanted revenge because she believes that he wrote a letter to her father causing her to be sent to a military style boarding school in another country. Also, she feels that Josh robbed her brother of his share of his company as an original founder. Now, Josh is the CEO of Aeon Industries and needs Caroline to bring him from geek to GQ so he can get funding for his project. Caroline is being blackmailed by Mr. X. He demands that Caroline be Josh's image consultant and get the plans for his latest project or he will frame her brother for murder.
While I liked the book, there were just way too many times that I was left scratching my head and was looking to fill in some continuity issues in the book. There was more was more of an explanation as to why Josh hates crowds than for some of the major plot lines in the book.
1. The whole blackmail thing seems to be a major part of the plot, after all, that is why Caroline got herself hired as Josh's image consultant. Yet, it is wrapped up very offhandedly. And Josh didn't seem bothered about the woman he has fantasized over attempting to blackmail her.
2. The other thing a reader needs to get around is Caroline's fixation on her brother being left out of the company. Throughout the novel, until the last chapter, there are references: "This all could have been Connor's - at least a third of it." There was a sentence from Josh's perspective of how there was a "secret" account that he had. The reader has to assume that he has been putting one third of the profits into the "secret" account for her brother. At the end of the book, he is called up on stage at Comic-Con to be introduced. Was he back with the company? We will never know.
3. There was a lot of continuity problems with Caroline and this military school in a "foreign" country". One page mentions that Josh was a sophomore and she was a senior. Another page said she was sent to boarding school at sixteen. Another page said she was sent to boarding school in Eastern Europe April of her Junior year. So, how old was she and was it boarding school or military school. What military man would send his child to a school (no matter what type) in EASTERN former Communist block countries EUROPE.
4. So much of Caroline's issues revolve around her father. Is he alive? In the first chapter, there is a mention of thinking that the person could be calling about her father being in trouble at the VA hospital. There are other vague references to him but nothing about present day and why he is at the VA.
So, what could have been a great book ended up with an editor failing to catch some glaring continuity issues.
I received an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment