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Summer Fling (2012)

by Serenity Woods(Favorite Author)

3.45 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Escape Publishing

review 1: Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalleySummer Fling began as an entry in a Harlequin writing challenge. The author says that it won first prize and has expanded from that. Although I didn’t particularly care for this book, I can see promise in this author and will try other romances that she writes in the future.For now, let’s look at Summer Fling, a novel about a man and a plane. The man is Garth Rowland, an American living in New Zealand. Garth owns and runs a sky-diving business and he loves every minute of it. He used to be a journalist but was captured in Afghanistan and tortured. He escaped but lives with the emotional/mental repercussions of his almost two year long captivity. He only feels free when he has the open sky above him and relishes ... moretaking newbies on their first jump. I thought Garth was amazing. We only get a few details about his time in Afghanistan (thankfully) but the author is able to express how truly awful it was. And Garth is also dealing with some other scars as well. He was married when he was captured and thoughts of his wife gave him the will to keep going. He escapes his imprisonment and when he returns home, he fully intends on devoting everything he has to making his marriage work. Unfortunately, Garth finds out that she was involved with another man, named Nick, and that it had started before he went to Afghanistan! Garth is devastated and to make matters worse, she was killed in a car crash while Nick was driving. At that point, Garth decided that he would have his revenge on the man who killed his wife by ruining Nick’s business. Even though we don’t really get to know him very well, I really did like Garth. Chloe, on the other hand, not so much. She starts out fine and has a great introduction: she’s about to go on her very first sky dive!! She seems nervous (of course) but you can still see that’s she sweet and funny. She, too, has her own rough past. Chloe’s mom is bi-polar and had never been diagnosed (until recently). Because of that, Chloe and her mom were always moving and Chloe never really had an opportunity to make many friends. On top of that, Chloe and her boyfriend recently broke up because, one, he stole her savings and two, she found out he was cheating on her. He also claimed that Chloe was boring and not spontaneous. To prove to herself that she ISN’T boring and that she CAN take risks, she decides to do the riskiest, scariest thing imaginable (at least, to me it seems risky and scary): sky diving. So there are a few things about Chloe that I like: she’s brave (for sure) and she loves her friends. Oh, and she’s a chocolatier! What a cool job!But I have several issues with this book. My first issue is super minor and could just be my own quirk but I’ll mention it anyways. The book is set in New Zealand and it was obvious to me that the author was a New Zealander: She mentions 20 degrees being the height of New Zealand summer. I had to read the passage a few times before I figured out it wasn’t a typo (she was talking Celsius, not Fahrenheit). The author also uses names of cities to convey a length of time, but I don’t know where these places are so I don’t know how much time has passed. And yes, it matters because she’s saying that by the time one of the characters goes from one place to another, they’ve made up their mind about something. So was it a quick and easy decision? Or was it something that took hours to deliberate? Again, it’s not a huge big deal; it was more of a pet peeve. The next issue I had was that Chloe gets everything she wants and I don’t feel like she’s earned any of it. Garth pursuits HER (romantically). Her friends drag her to a wonderful beach party. Nick pursuits her. She wants to buy a local candy store and she can’t get the loan until she has collateral. Chloe asks her mom to put her own house up as collateral (which she does, of course). To make matters worse, only days before she asks for that, Chloe had essentially told her mom to eff off and had said what a horrible mom she was! Hello?!? And another thing, Garth tells Chloe the details of his past (which included changing his name). Then, she proceeds to tell those details to everyone she talks to after that! Do ya think he wanted you to blab his personal details to YOUR friends? To Nick?!?! That’s exactly what she does!! Lastly, after Garth gets Nick’s business (a candy store or Chocolate shop, I think), Garth finds out that Chloe wanted to buy it and GARTH APOLOGIZES TO CHLOE!! For what?!?! He didn’t even know that she wanted the damn business! And Garth is apologizing to her! AND, she has the fricking audacity, later on, to say that she accepts his apology. Oh so fricking gracious of you! She is so incredibly selfish. Oh boo hoo, her ex took her money and broke her heart. So? Welcome to reality, sweet-tits. Chalk it up to a big mistake and move on. But no, she just keeps torturing her friends and family with her shittiness.After all of that, I still felt like I didn’t really know the characters all that well. I feel like their backstories were not fully fleshed out. Speaking of flesh, there isn’t a lot of it. There’s not that much sexual tension either. Overall, I was wholly disappointed in this book and had a very difficult time finishing it. Unfortunately, I have to say that I would not recommend this book.
review 2: Serenity never disappoints. I loved this story. Read it in one sitting and it thoroughly cheered me up on a day I wasn't feeling very well. From the breathtaking descriptions of the scenery to an extremely yummy and tortured hero (my fav kind of hero) to a sassy heroine, this story had it all. The sex was sizzling, the love story intense and the ending left me smiling. What more can you want in a story? less

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