Half Moon Bay

Yawn. Is it over yet? Thankfully yes. I'm not quite sure how this book is classified as “romantic suspense”. Sure I get the romantic part - there's the prerequisite future true love couple who are both introduced early on, one of whom does the hate you side of the relationship while the other does the whole brooding hero with a heart of gold side. Typical and eye roll worthy but understandable. It's the suspense part I don't get. For long stretches nothing happens, except pages of expository chatter that doesn't move anything forward. There were pointless conversations and characters. (Seriously, just about every Dan and Felicity scene could have been cut without harming the story.) Not to mention the fact that Ghost!Nina haunted everything. And by everything, I mean Ellie and every thought and action. If Ghost!Nina had been an actual ghost, that might have actually helped. Sadly she wasn't. She was just another plot device to slow down the story. When the action finally settled in at a decent pace, I found I just didn't care anymore. Besides, it was pretty obvious where the story was headed (I'd figured out very early on that the events were set in motion because Nina was an idiot).

I have a huge amount of dislike for the “yes, you deserve answers, but I just can't tell you right now. I will. Someday. Maybe. You know when the story has to quickly wrap up” plot devise. Rarely is that used in a good way. Most of the time I find it a lazy way to stall story, romantic or otherwise. Especially when you use that excuse for 3/4 of the book. Then it's made even more irritating by the fact that the one character who could have cleared up so much of the romantic entanglement mess - dear old dad - was purposefully kept way off finding himself (or whatever) by the author.

On a side note, I thin the story at some point stated that Shadow, the dog, was a doberman? Yeah. Not even close to what I pictured in my head. Since this was set in Australia, I pictured something more like a Cattle Dog or a Kelpie. Or even a shepard/ border collie-ish mutt type dog for that matter.

I wanted to like this one, really I did. Instead it made me want to go take a nap.