Graham Russell and I weren’t made for one another.I was driven by emotion; he was apathetic. I dreamed while he lived in nightmares. I cried when he had no tears to shed.
Despite his frozen heart and my readiness to run, we sometimes shared seconds. Seconds when our eyes locked and we saw each other’s secrets. Seconds when his lips tasted my fears, and I breathed in his pains. Seconds when we both imagined what it would be like to love one another.
Those seconds left us floating, but when reality knocked us sideways, gravity forced us to descend.
Graham Russell wasn’t a man who knew how to love, and I wasn’t a woman who knew how to either. Yet if I had the chance to fall again, I’d fall with him forever.
Even if we were destined to crash against solid ground.
Comment: This is yet another book I can't remember why I added to my TBR but now that I did read it, I suppose it must be because the characters exemplify opposites attract, which is also a type of plot I tend to appreciate.
In this book we meet hero Graham who ends up taking care of his baby daughter right after she is born because the mother, Jane, can't cope with having a child, especially because she needed an incubator during her first days.
Lucy is Jane's younger sister, a so-called free spirit but very dedicated to those she loves, in particular their other sister Mary who battled cancer. Jane and Lucy never got along but once she learns Jane had a child and left, Lucy can't ignore it and starts to help Graham.
Lucy knows she shouldn't feel attracted to Graham, a reserved, serious guy, even more so since he's a famous author and Lucy doesn't think she could be his equal but mostly because he is married to her sister, not mattering much they don't have a good marriage and less so since Jane left.
The problem is that the more they get along, the more they feel they can't ignore it...
This is the fourth installment of a series titled Elements but looking at the blurbs and seeing the names of the characters of those other 3 books, the connection has to be about the fire, water, air and earth elements inserted into the book's titles and not a interwoven connection between characters. I read this book and not the others and this felt a stand alone so I could say the order of books doesn't play an important role to comprehend content.
This said, I have to comment on the blurb. Another trend of having blurbs not summarizing or giving an idea of what the book is about as generally as possible is to give the POV of characters. I'm not that bothered to avoid reading but...well, it's slightly annoying because it makes everything feel to centered on the characters and not their stories. The truth is that not every contemporary story should be told in the first person, not every author can manage to present it in a convincing way and although here the author alternated between the POV or the hero and heroine, I still would have preferred this to be third person.
I think this stpry had a lot going on and things got to be a bit confusing. We have the heroine who doesn't seem to have much focus on her life, so some self notion issues to address, the hero has daddy issues, then sister Jane to deal with, sister Mary has her things too, then there's the romance, than some tragedy, then some drama, then a twist... I mean, this is a busy story and I don't think we got to really grasp the layers of the main couple among so much to think of.
The fact they were the ones telling us stuff was not always positive because then it felt like they were rather egocentric to spend so much time wondering about their own feelings and expectations and, sure, we all do that, but not out loud otherwise others would think we considered ourselves to be more important then them, right? In romances I get the tactic but it's not always a given we can connect more with the characters by knowing what they are thinking.
Some elements are interesting, I like how Graham and Lucy bonded over the baby, I liked how some of the drama issues were dealt with and how I was left thinking on the impact they had on the characters... but at the same time, for such smart people, they surely fell to some traps but I can excuse that, after all in real life it's also always easier to get mistakes when it's someone else making them.
This means most characters were not endearing to me, though.
I liked Lucy, she was sweet and compassionate and I rooted for her but since the writing failed to make me connect, I was distanced enough from everything to be worried but not be truly touched by every setback she suffered.
Graham had his moments, I liked how he didn't run from the notion he was falling in love as soon as he admitted it to himself and I liked how he did seem to change his ways as he spent more time with Lucy but especially with his daughter. Some situations related to him and his mentor Oliver were a little over the top dramatic but well...not everything is perfect.
I'd say that with so many subjects to address, some were not dealt with in the most definite way, the pace wasn't always suitable for the type of issues happening and that added to my sense of detachment from what was going to happen next. Some situations felt they were set up to force other things to happen otherwise the characters wouldn't have to be exposed to some emotions.
There were just too many things happening to the characters and although that is normal in real life, in a condensed story it always feels like the author wants to say everything too quickly and the result isn't always as smoothy presented as it could.
In my opinion, this wasn't totally bad, I did enjoy several scenes but the pace, the fact the first half of the story didn't add much to the important issues addressed by the author and the way I still felt distanced from everything made it for just an OK read in the end.
Grade: 5/10
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