Little Miss Bookmark: Book Review: A Mess of Reason by A. Wilding Wells

“Scout Steele is the country music star People magazine just voted “sexiest bachelor”. More than that, he’s my best friend forever, my bff. OK, not quite my lingo - I’m almost thirty. We’ve shared everything, and then some. Even crossed the line a few times, but not too far. Well, mostly…. He’ll go to the end of the world to make me happy; he knows me inside and out. Except, that is, my most intimate and darkest defect; this he must never know. It would ruin us, and ‘us’ is the only thing that matters. So I’m marrying someone who doesn’t care about the truth or, frankly, even me.”

“She’s twisted and sexy as all get out. Brilliant and beautiful, Tess Harlow is my best friend and my forbidden fruit - the woman I’ve always known and loved the best but can never have. Between my tours (and sexy groupies) and her man-juggling, we’ve never found “our time”. I love her to pieces but she’s about to marry the bane of my existence, rocker Creed Luce. He’s a walking cliché and he treats my Tess like hell - why she stays with him I still haven’t figured out. I am always there for her…but not this time. Tess deserves better, way better, my better. The door is half-open and I have my ways. Her best friend is about to become her best lover.”

This is the first book that I've had the opportunity to read by Wells and I was pretty impressed. I enjoyed a lot of what was going on with this book. Can you imagine being in love with your best friend but afraid to tell them because it might change the relationship and you're sure that your bestie doesn't love you like that but then your bestie is thinking the SAME EXACT thing about you?!? Crazy and perfect premise for a book. I wasn't due to read this one for quite a few weeks but I bumped it up in the schedule because I couldn't get this book out of my mind until I picked it up. Man, I'm glad that I did!

I enjoyed the way that the author created Scout and Tess. I admired Tess because of her spunkiness (totally not a word but it should be!) but at the same time, I absolutely despised her because of her fiance Creed. What a douche! I could not stand that guy and while I could understand why Tess was with him, it just irritated the shit out of me the whole time. I wanted to just shake her and make her realize that Scout was the man for her but hey, whatever. Scout ... he was interesting. I think that the thing I liked most about him was his playfulness and sweet demeanor. I found myself saying "AWWW" quite a bit and I just couldn't help myself. Such a sweet guy.

Now, this is one of those rocker/celebrity stories but the number one thing I appreciated about this book was it didn't push that fact into your face constantly. There are some rocker books that I've read where it just waxes poetic about how much money the characters have and how famous they are but that wasn't the case for this one. It's understated and most of the time like a gentle current pushing the story along but it's nothing that would be in your face. It was great.

The story bumped along at a great pace, I didn't feel like it lagged or slowed down in any parts. But. BUT. It was a bit sugary sweet sometimes. There was a lot of lovey-dovey stuff that just became tiring every once in a while. It was like watching your best friend make out with their new girlfriend every 5 seconds and while Tess and Scout didn't use baby talk, it was kind of the same in my mind. It was eye-roll worthy at times. That was really the only downside to the novel. And get ready, it's an emotional roller coaster that you're going to go on with A Mess of Reason. It yanked at my heartstrings and then made me laugh. Great book, I would be more than willing to read another one by this author.

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

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