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Sam's Reviews (2010)

by Jan Irving(Favorite Author)

3.49 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1607379007 (ISBN13: 9781607379003)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Loose Id

review 1: I think I am going to throw a 3 up there and make them stick. I am really not sure about this one.Let's talk about Sam. He's a former Marine who was injured while in Afghanistan and is now in a wheelchair. He's also a knitter and writes romance novels and has custody of his 8 year old nephew, Joe. His Aunt, Audra, was brutally beaten by Bruiser, a guy who beats the elderly and steals from them. His neighborhood is rundown with graffiti and neglected buildings, but it's still his neighborhood. They stick together and ban together to try to find Bruiser and take care of what's theirs. When a hole gets knocked into his aunt's yarn business he knows he has to do something.He goes down to talk to the people putting up the new condos next to his building. This is where h... moree runs into the architect, Trevor Hollander (AKA Tall-nicknamed by Sam). From here things get...weird? I don't know. We get a lot of Sam living in his fantasy land as Rock (a perfect Navy SEAL). He daydreams a lot in the middle of conversations and he actually misses what's going on around him. Then after Rock is kind of forgotten we get Gunnar and Jia. Too many book scenes. I skipped over most of them. As far as the sex between Tall and Sam, well, I am not sure. The whole D/s thing worked but yet it didn't. They never even talked about it, it just kind of happened. I also cringed when Tall talked about people using him and sharing. Was Sam serious about sharing Tall or was that just his storytelling? The scene jumping was a bit much for me too. I felt like I was missing so much.I was actually kind of glad there wasn't much conflict in Tall and Sam's relationship because there was so much going on in the story with Audra's attack, becoming a parent, a hole in the building, Bruiser, Stevenson, etc. There was just so much going on, I was glad Tall and Sam stuck together like glue.Overall, it was okay, but I did like how Tall didn't even see the chair!
review 2: I wanted to like this book, but in the end, it's sum was less than it's parts.I liked the characters and I liked the story, I just couldn't connect to either the way this book was structured. It felt disjointed and I often found myself having to go back and re-read passages to make sure I hadn't accidentally skipped a paragraph because I was unsure of when or where I was.The cross-cutting between 'reality' and Sam's fictional world is an interesting plot device, but it wore thin for me when paired with the author's other device of ending scenes in the middle of actions and then referring later to what happened. Even this would have been ok, but I went completely over the edge during the community meeting scene where Sam is (apparently) having single sentence flashbacks to his last sexual encounter with Tall (I think...probably...)It's a romance novel, not Flaubert in the original French. I should be re-reading sections because they are hot, not because I'm confused. less

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