My Kind of Love
Author: Shane Morgan
Genre: NA Contemporary Romance
Book Description:
Reign is convinced that Nate is the right guy for her. That’s until Micah walks into her Mom’s restaurant looking for a job. Now Reign can’t seem to stop her heart from yearning for the guy with the mysterious sea blue eyes and melting smile.
Micah is all but perfect. He’s spent eight months in a juvenile detention center back in Colorado for his unintentional involvement in a crime. Now at nineteen and hoping to escape his ghosts, he lands a part-time job working at a seaside restaurant in Newport, Rhode Island where he meets the irresistible Reign.
He can’t help the way he feels whenever he’s around her, but she’s already taken and Micah doesn't want to disrupt her life or get himself in anymore trouble. But then his attraction for Reign proves too strong to deny, and Micah finds that he just might discover a reason to stop running.
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MY REVIEW
This book has been on my radar for quite some time now, so when I finally sized down my tbr list, I was glad to start reading it. I read about three chapters and couldn't get into it, so I put it down. I left it a few weeks and gave it another try, but still, I couldn't connect with it. Finally, a few months later, I decided to give it one last try, and I'm happy to say I got through it. Why did I have such a hard time connecting with the story? Well, I suppose it's because the story felt hollow, void of memorable content, of characters that were demanding of my attention.
Micah, fresh out of juvenile detention centre, happens upon Newport, Rhode Island and lands a job at a seaside restaurant, where he meets the owner's daughter, Reign, a recent high school graduate who's looking to escape the confides of her reality. Micah and Regin share the need to run from their past, and it's the sense of them both being unfamiliar with each other, not knowing the baggage that each one comes with, that forms an attraction between them - wait, let me rephrase that. It's what should have formed an attraction between them, but, honestly, their attraction was purely sexual. From since the moment Micah caught sight of Reign in the park, it has been non-stop about her appearance - likewise with Reign, in regards to how she feels about Micah. This reference to each other's appearance was far too repetitive that it became annoying. I wanted more from these characters. I wanted to know what they had to offer? I needed a reason to care about them, and I feel I did not receive that.
One of the problems I had with Micah and Reign was that they were too alike in character. Their thoughts were almost identical to the point where it was sometimes hard to differentiate between the two. Micah had a little mystery about him and had some quick, witty dialogue during his initial interaction with Reign, but as the story progressed, and he started to show more interest in having a relationship with Reign, their interaction became a little too corny and boring. Having said that, he was more of an interesting character than Reign's boyfriend, Nate, an inconsiderate sex addict who constantly pressured Reign to lose her virginity even after she persistently told him she wasn't ready. He definitely pulled off the jerk role well, but that was the only thing expressed about him. I wouldn't have cared much about his presence except for the mere fact that Reign was presented as being reasonably intelligent, able to establish that Nate was no good for her, yet she still stuck with him. If she'd been in love with him, I could have understood and even accepted her decision to stay with him, but she wasn't, so why?
Another problem I found while reading was the constant need to have a character interpret what the other was feeling or thinking. What's my role as a reader? I want to do some thinking too. I would have liked it if the author allowed readers to contemplate a moment without outright telling us what the character is feeling or thinking. It just happened a little too frequently for my liking. I wanted to form my own impression of the characters.
There were many parts where I found the story dragged on a little too much, scenes that did nothing in way of progressing the story. It took so long for the story to go anywhere, and when it finally started to pick up, with Micah returning home to deal with the problems he had left behind, it came to an end.
The biggest issue I had with the story was the lack of motivation in the characters. Both characters felt guilt for something that happened in the past and they're both trying to escape it, but there was hardly any connection to their conflict and the events that unfolded throughout the story. The motivation just wasn't dominant or unified in any sense that it made me wonder what the point of the story was. In the end, the characters just seemed to lack purpose.
Overall, the story needed more direction and objective. It was okay but also a little underwhelming.
VERDICT:
BRONZE
Award: Bronze
Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars
Content Rating: PG-13 (one explicit sex scene)
Source: Own copy
