Chasing Perfect - Susan Mallery
Chasing Perfect - Susan Mallery
So we begin this new and exciting book blog with a sadly lackluster book. Spoilers abound.
Here's the goodreads summary:
Welcome to Fool's Gold, California, a charming community in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. There's lots to do and plenty of people to meet, especially women. Because there's just one tiny problem in Fool's Gold: the men don't seem to stick around. Maybe it's the lure of big-city life, or maybe it's plain old bad luck, but regardless of the reason, the problem has to be fixed, fast. And Charity Jones may be just the city planner to do it. Charity's nomadic childhood has left her itching to settle down, and she immediately falls in love with all the storybook town has to offer - everything, that is, except its sexiest and most famous resident, former world-class cyclist Josh Golden. With her long list of romantic disasters, she's not about to take a chance on another bad boy, even if everyone else thinks he's perfect just the way he is. But maybe that's just what he needs - someone who knows the value of his flaws. Someone who knows that he's just chasing perfect.
Okay, so this book was unbelievable to me, and I read A LOT of unbelievable books. Charity, a city planner, moves to Fool's Gold, CA where a cyclist is the sexy celebrity townie and golden boy - named Josh Golden, no seriously, that's his last name. Charity is an uber-organized librarian type, who dresses badly, and has no friends from her past life, or at least none are mentioned. Her mother has died, and while she was alive, she moved Charity around a lot so Charity is looking for a home in Fool's Gold.
So Charity here, gets hired by the mayor and does a presentation to investors on her first day and Golden Boy comes in and saves the day. She's all like "i feel tingly" and they start running into each other all over town. In fact, she's living in the hotel room next to his, where he resides permanently since he owns the hotel.
Charity's actually a pretty boring lady, but she befriends the mayor, city party planner, and local bartender. She won't drink any hard liquor and waits to even drink her wine until dinner. But then she attends this girl's night, and after being told she dresses like an old lady, she changes it up and looks like a vixen. Very "She's All That" which is fine, and Josh, just like Freddy Prinze Jr., sits up and takes notice. I'm not going to lie, the romantic build-up was nice. It was sort of slow, if not all that steamy, but pretty cute.
In this small town, everyone knows everyone literally. At first, she can't even walk around with Josh since people will notice and she doesn't want to be scarred by his man-whore reputation, but this hesitancy somehow ends without explanation. I guess because he's so smoking and is the ONLY thing people in the town talk about. There is some scandal about misappropriation of town funds, but this is basically a side note. Also, apparently there is this mysterious man shortage and Charity is charged with getting more men in to town. This is yet another potential plot line that I guess Ms. Mallery forgot to continue/failed to develop since this epidemic is mentioned repeatedly, but not resolved, except for the building of a hospital. You know, because hospitals have doctors which are mostly male. Weak. This alone was too much, but moving on.
For me there were a couple, or rather a laundry list, of things I just couldn't get passed:
1) Charity makes an appeal to the town on a tv show to help her out in a presentation, and then 3 days later, the entire town comes, filling up a high school gym.
2) Smoking town celebrity, who hasn't gotten laid in over a year, falls for nerdy Charity immediately, despite her obvious awkwardness and lack of wit, charm, or style.
3) The mayor who is her grandmother hired her but didn't do it because she was her grandmother.
4) This small town deserves 2 hospitals.
5) The infamous male shortage problem - no pun intended.
6) The random fraud plot-line which seems to be a page-filler, failing to contribute anything of substance to the plot
7) All of the town people talking about Josh constantly. It was seriously taxing.
8) Notoriously careful Charity gets knocked-up and only checks her calendar after people in a hair salon ask her if she's having cravings. Are these women walking pregnancy tests? Also, I know accidents happen, but this seems a bit off to me.
As you can tell, I was not a fan.
Next up: Somewhere I'll Find You by Lisa Kleypas. I generally love Ms. Kleypas, so I'm hoping this will be a much more positive review.
So we begin this new and exciting book blog with a sadly lackluster book. Spoilers abound.
Here's the goodreads summary:
Welcome to Fool's Gold, California, a charming community in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. There's lots to do and plenty of people to meet, especially women. Because there's just one tiny problem in Fool's Gold: the men don't seem to stick around. Maybe it's the lure of big-city life, or maybe it's plain old bad luck, but regardless of the reason, the problem has to be fixed, fast. And Charity Jones may be just the city planner to do it. Charity's nomadic childhood has left her itching to settle down, and she immediately falls in love with all the storybook town has to offer - everything, that is, except its sexiest and most famous resident, former world-class cyclist Josh Golden. With her long list of romantic disasters, she's not about to take a chance on another bad boy, even if everyone else thinks he's perfect just the way he is. But maybe that's just what he needs - someone who knows the value of his flaws. Someone who knows that he's just chasing perfect.
Okay, so this book was unbelievable to me, and I read A LOT of unbelievable books. Charity, a city planner, moves to Fool's Gold, CA where a cyclist is the sexy celebrity townie and golden boy - named Josh Golden, no seriously, that's his last name. Charity is an uber-organized librarian type, who dresses badly, and has no friends from her past life, or at least none are mentioned. Her mother has died, and while she was alive, she moved Charity around a lot so Charity is looking for a home in Fool's Gold.
So Charity here, gets hired by the mayor and does a presentation to investors on her first day and Golden Boy comes in and saves the day. She's all like "i feel tingly" and they start running into each other all over town. In fact, she's living in the hotel room next to his, where he resides permanently since he owns the hotel.
Charity's actually a pretty boring lady, but she befriends the mayor, city party planner, and local bartender. She won't drink any hard liquor and waits to even drink her wine until dinner. But then she attends this girl's night, and after being told she dresses like an old lady, she changes it up and looks like a vixen. Very "She's All That" which is fine, and Josh, just like Freddy Prinze Jr., sits up and takes notice. I'm not going to lie, the romantic build-up was nice. It was sort of slow, if not all that steamy, but pretty cute.
In this small town, everyone knows everyone literally. At first, she can't even walk around with Josh since people will notice and she doesn't want to be scarred by his man-whore reputation, but this hesitancy somehow ends without explanation. I guess because he's so smoking and is the ONLY thing people in the town talk about. There is some scandal about misappropriation of town funds, but this is basically a side note. Also, apparently there is this mysterious man shortage and Charity is charged with getting more men in to town. This is yet another potential plot line that I guess Ms. Mallery forgot to continue/failed to develop since this epidemic is mentioned repeatedly, but not resolved, except for the building of a hospital. You know, because hospitals have doctors which are mostly male. Weak. This alone was too much, but moving on.
For me there were a couple, or rather a laundry list, of things I just couldn't get passed:
1) Charity makes an appeal to the town on a tv show to help her out in a presentation, and then 3 days later, the entire town comes, filling up a high school gym.
2) Smoking town celebrity, who hasn't gotten laid in over a year, falls for nerdy Charity immediately, despite her obvious awkwardness and lack of wit, charm, or style.
3) The mayor who is her grandmother hired her but didn't do it because she was her grandmother.
4) This small town deserves 2 hospitals.
5) The infamous male shortage problem - no pun intended.
6) The random fraud plot-line which seems to be a page-filler, failing to contribute anything of substance to the plot
7) All of the town people talking about Josh constantly. It was seriously taxing.
8) Notoriously careful Charity gets knocked-up and only checks her calendar after people in a hair salon ask her if she's having cravings. Are these women walking pregnancy tests? Also, I know accidents happen, but this seems a bit off to me.
As you can tell, I was not a fan.
Next up: Somewhere I'll Find You by Lisa Kleypas. I generally love Ms. Kleypas, so I'm hoping this will be a much more positive review.
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