It's page 42, and I'm just so confused. This doesn't sound like a Jennifer Echols book, this doesn't read like Jennifer Echols characters. I came to Goodreads expecting to see that STAR CROSSED was the first book Echols completed, now being re-released. Because this feels like a first novel effort. Lots of exposition dialogue, lots of (rather boring) time in a character's head to introduce their "problems". Wendy's professional situation doesn't feel real, her continuous references to her ex feel more like an obsession on her part than any "big secret" that is going to cause problems in the future. If her ex is in Vegas, too, I may just give up on this book.

This is seriously the weirdest book! Page after page after page of the characters *telling* me what they feel, and yet they feel no more organic or real than they were on page one. A black eye makes Wendy think about Daniel's brother dying in the World Trade Center and about her own dead dad? Really?! Either I need to know/care about Wendy a *whole* lot more before that gets dropped into the narrative (so as it have it make sense), or Echols is telling me someting completely new about the character (in which case I need more than one line). And can I say again, this doesn't feel like an Echols book *at all*.

Pg.95... I give up. These characters have these long, ridiculous, expository inner thoughts, they're as stiff as Barbie dolls using semaphore. Perhaps part of the problem is my own excitement, any new Echols book is cause for me to drop everything else and dive in. Maybe this needs to be treated as a "fill time at the beach, low expectations" read instead.