Author submission in exchange for an honest review.
Title:
Blindsided
Author:
Author:
Gemma Rice
Release Date:
Release Date:
May 2011
Publisher:
Publisher:
Night Publishing
Word Count:
Word Count:
approx. 61,000
Purchase Links:
Purchase Links:
Smashwords
Author's Website:
Author's Website:
Description:
How would you react if you came home unexpectedly to find your boyfriend in bed with a pretty young blonde girl whose pink nails and sweaty palms are clamping his muscular back?
Leanne is the one who found them and it's Andy who is using Trish as a trampoline.
What happens next? Will Leanne and André, share champagne in the bath, and kiss and make up?
Doesn't sound likely, but they do.
And to seal the reconciliation, Andy carves his love for Leanne on his chest.
Then Leanne finds out about Andy's relationship with another girl she has never heard of, Kate.
'Blindsided' is Gemma Rice at her most uncompromising, it a love story which is climatic and dramatic.
Love is patient, love is kind, love is understanding. And love catches you when you fall.
Leanne is the one who found them and it's Andy who is using Trish as a trampoline.
What happens next? Will Leanne and André, share champagne in the bath, and kiss and make up?
Doesn't sound likely, but they do.
And to seal the reconciliation, Andy carves his love for Leanne on his chest.
Then Leanne finds out about Andy's relationship with another girl she has never heard of, Kate.
'Blindsided' is Gemma Rice at her most uncompromising, it a love story which is climatic and dramatic.
Love is patient, love is kind, love is understanding. And love catches you when you fall.
Blindsided is one of those stories best reserved for a day or night when you want to wrap yourself up in angst. Me, I'm a fan of angst, so that could be any time. This is the story of Lee and Andre as told from Lee's point of view. Lee thinks her relationship is just fine, at least until she walks in on her lover, Andre, with his, err, lover. In their bed.
Thus begins a very gloomy chapter in the couple's relationship. Andre's secret fling is only the tip of the iceberg, and things go from bad to worse. Lee has long been aware of Andre's fragile emotional state, and isn't exactly surprised when his way of coping with the revelations about his activities take a turn to the dark side.
Overall, I found it an interesting twist on your typical romance. There was some struggle for me in settling into the read. Personally, I'm not a tremendous fan of first-person, present-tense. It can grow tedious if the story is lengthy -- but that's just me. At the start, the writing was well, descriptively intense, which was a bit of a distraction. I'm more interested in learning about the characters, not the shade of the color of the room the action is happening in. But that quickly settled down and I was able to leave my initial misgivings behind.
Lee is sympathetic without losing her edge. Andre is another story. While the author offers some potential points of sympathy for him, overall, I found him manipulative and unlikable. I was invested enough in the story that I spent a couple minutes grumbling at Lee when I finished, mostly because of the choices she made towards the end.
Blindsided is definitely unique. The ending is not one you might expect in a romance novel. It may not be one you agree with. It may be one you cheer. This is one of those stories that can elicit intense and varied emotional responses, depending upon the reader's experiences with relationships and the ups and downs of life with the ones they've loved. This one is a thought-provoking read.
Joey's Rating:
Thank you Joey
ReplyDeleteI can tell you this book has received 1 star reviews on Amazon because of readers not agreeing with Lee's choices.
I find that delightful, because it's fiction, and they were genuinely that upset with her, they took it out on the author :)
Thank you for your review. It will be back on Amazon soon (it changed publishers, I'm just waiting for the new publisher to release onto Amazon again)
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