Sunday, June 12, 2016

Book Review: Her Best Friend's Lover by Shiloh Walker


Dale Stoner loved women, and women seemed to love him right back. He danced around the line that led to seriousness, but any time one woman got too close, he two-stepped back, quick and pretty as you please. He’s fallen in love before and he doesn’t want to go that route again. No woman was ever going to get close to him again.

The only exception is his best friend, Lauren. She’s the only one who really matters. But she’s his friend…and guys don’t sleep with their best friends, do they?

Lauren wasn’t the kind of woman to believe in love at first sight, but then she met Dale. He’s everything she shouldn’t want—a flirt, a woman chaser…and he’s also in love with somebody else.

But one hot, steamy night changes everything…



 


Before I delve into the review on this one, it needs to be said that I adore Shiloh Walker. I've read a couple of books by her and then force-fed the titles to my friends until they would read them because I enjoyed them so very much. You know how you can just grab a book by your favorite author at store, not even taking the time to read the back of the book before you buy it and you are completely confident that it will be amazing, sight unseen? Well, picking this book up, I just assumed that it would be as amazing as the other two and I was in for a nice bookish getaway. That's not entirely how my experience actually played out. Not at all.

This book is completely unlike the other books I've read by Walker. The tone is different, the writing style is VERY different, the editing is horrible and the characters are weirdly put together. It was very strange. At first, I thought that maybe I had started reading a different book than this one because it was so off. It was almost surreal. I was convinced I had picked up the wrong book. But I hadn't. This book was a derailment from what I had come to know as Walker's writing. It wasn't a crash and burn but there was some serious damage done. It was just so unlike the Walker writing I loved. 

Now more in depth about the book ... not only does it always switch POV rather abruptly but these random, non-important characters get paragraphs of inner dialogue. Out of no where! It's very strange. Like, you're reading about the main character and then BOOM! her dog's uncle's grandma's best-friend's poodle's owner gives a 5 page dissertation on the art of underwater basket-weaving with a llama's toe hair. Fine. Maybe that's taking it a little to the extreme but I hope I correctly conveyed my WTF thoughts as this book played out. And it wasn't just once that this happened, it was a different dissertation topic but it was still just as random and WTF-ish. 

And THEN the leading hero is an a-hole. Dale talks about Lauren like she's an irritating pest. He says and thinks these super derogatory things about her quite a bit. I'm not entirely sure if he even likes her as a human being. If my husband was saying stuff like that about me, I would karate-chop his Adam's apple and then knee him in the kiwis. 

I don't know ... the book was just weird. I assumed it would be good. You know what they say about assuming ... you get punished by having to read an inner monologue about braiding your grandpa's ear hairs. So strange. Not the book for me but I'm not giving up on Walker. This book was written eon's ago and I know that her writing style has changed. FOR THE BETTER. I will say that it's interesting to see an author's growth, though. I just wish that I didn't have to learn it this way. 

* I received this novel in exchange for an honest review *



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