Natasha West

This was… fine. I blasted through it in like an hour or so but I can’t really say that I enjoyed it. The taboo nature of the professor like, purposefully going out to seduce her young students wasn’t the turn off for me (though it’s obvious she’s like, not a great person, I’m fine with reading about not great people) it just all felt really shallow and a lot more telling rather than showing. I get that it’s a novella, so things move quickly, but it all just felt really surface level. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great. Probably like 2.5 stars. It was okay.… (altro)

This is most likely going to be a fairly negative review, so i will make a couple of disclaimers before i start. This is by no means a terrible story, it had some good scenes and concepts. Most of my grievances come from a place of enjoyment, its a story i could have seen myself really liking had it done better.

The concept is pretty simple, coworkers turn to lovers, with the singles cruise setting adding some spice to it. We see how the characters see themselves and how it contrasts how they view eachother. The characters were initially one of the best parts of the story, but as the story went on, i grew more concerned. Natalie and Eden are both very flawed people with self worth issues. I thought it was actually fairy realistic in the sense that they were relatable issues. The problem with this characterization, especially with how it relates to their love lives is that i dont view either of them as being emotionally healthy enough to enter a relationship

This is my opinion obviously, and maybe other people could see having a successful relationship even with these issues not really sorted out. I think the writer saw this as a problem as well, so near the end of the book the writing tries to have the characters work through their issues, but with limited success. These arent issues that go away overnight and in the story, that is pretty much how they end up getting resolved. With these sorts of issues, you really needed a much longer story with a longer time span so we could see the characters develop rather than just flip flop. This is by far the biggest issue with the romance itself because for me it just doesnt work as it is presented.

Even taking that out of the equation, there just werent enough character interactions between Eden and Natalie for me to buy into the love connection. The majority of the story is one misunderstanding after another without much real meaty interactions to make me care. Even the sex felt unearned given that the first sex scene came after only one somewhat significant interaction. Not to say that there arent good character interactions, there are with the side characters. The sad thing is, by the end of the story i felt more engaged with the side characters than with the main characters. Its nice to have a good cast, but they should have focused more on the main relationship.

I just dont think the set up works with the premise. You can have characters with alot of room to grow, but that idea doesnt work well with a week long cruise setting. Maybe if the cruise were a month long, the book was longer and they spent more time on interactions than misunderstandings, then it could have been a favorite. Granted, not being a writer myself, maybe that would be bad. All i can say for sure is the book didnt work for me. Like i said, not terrible, but just alot of missed opportunity… (altro)