I knew what I was getting into.  After all, I’d read This Time Next Year by Sophie Cousens, and it was good enough for me to add it to my “read this every holiday season” list of books.  Just a bit of fluff to end the year on a happy note.  So I knew that this book was going to be a classic romance novel, with all the formulas that go along with it.  I was looking forward to a fluffy book.

But I got annoyed by Laura, the main character, pretty quickly.  She’s nice enough, but we don’t learn too much about her at the beginning, other than how motivated she is by her romantic ideology, and how she has two friends that are as opposite as night and day.  There needed to be more exposure to her friends and family to understand exactly what it meant for her to offer up her parents’ relationship as fodder for the lifestyle website’s articles.  We know her boss is pretty toxic, which makes sense – we have to have some kind of initial villain to root against, or to provide some kind of forward momentum.

The airport meet cute is pretty obvious.  As was the meeting of the cab driver.  Those of us who have read romance novels knew what was coming, and it should be fun to watch the interactions between the main character and her “unexpected” interest.  I actually enjoyed Ted much more than I had initially thought.  He was funny and kind, and I really wanted to understand more about him as the novel went on.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have the same desire to understand Laura.  I just couldn’t get beyond her irritating behavior, which seemed so childish and naïve over and over.

I actually didn’t get interested in her until after she had her epiphany.  Obviously, that’s something that had to happen near the end of the novel.  But honestly, I think I would have liked the book more if it had occurred near the beginning and we were taken along the journey of finding her new way.  Perhaps that would have been too similar to Cousens’s other book.

If I’m being completely honest, I would have rather had the Epilogue as a larger portion of the book.  How did they fare after the week on the island, going back to “real life” and figuring out their relationship?  Or was that the whole point – focusing on the now instead of the past or future?

Three stars is all I could give this one.  And if you’d like to hear another review that I agree with, check out Jacob Proffitt’s review (though he didn’t finish reading it).