He is rough around the edges and mean.
He is everything she’s ever wanted.
He doesn’t even know she exists.
Her life is a joke.
She doesn’t step on cracks in the sidewalk.
She laughs at inappropriate times.
She talks when she shouldn’t.
She is clumsy and trips on air.
She is finally on his radar.
God help her now.
Comment: I cannot remember why this book was in the pile, but having finished I can only assume it was because the dynamics are "confident guy/clumsy heroine", a sort of opposites attract which tends to be one of the tropes I like the most.
In the small town Gun Barrel (?), at the local school, teachers Ezra and Raleigh don't really see each other that much, and Raleigh is a klutz in movement, always looking silly after her often misadventures and accidents. However, after one of this little episodes at the store, Ezra helps her and accidentally sees what she was reading on her phone, which makes him intrigued. Discovering they work at the same school (?) makes things easier for him to approach her, but can Raleigh believe he is really interested in her? Besides, some people don't really like it that they might become a couple...
This is another book which wasn't very appealing to me due to the writing style. There is no method, no reliability to the characters' actions and no structure to the plot. This reads as if the author had lots and lots of ideas, wanted to present them just like that without considering segment and evolution of situations, and the heroine is a klutz all the time. It's just not credible and even if the goal was to write something funny or on the comedy side, to me this failed.
I can no longer remember all the details I've found silly, but Ezra and Raleigh working at the same school and he not knowing seems far fetched,even though their areas are not the same (sports for him, something else for her, I can't remember). It also felt weird how some school bureaucracy was presented here, but perhaps this is something any US reader gets and I don't. The family dynamics between Ezra and his family was cute but completely inappropriate because it never stopped being crazy.
I am as fond of funny/cute stories as other readers but I do prefer some serious elements, some conscious thinking regarding the characters' development and that was missing here. Both the plot and the characters were too crazy, too exaggerated in everything and I kept thinking this read more like a silly comedy than an actual story plot. This was a pity, actually, because the ideas were interesting, especially the ones related to the school situations and the romance.
There were several serious issues included in this story which were masked by silliness or not debated as they should, namely bullying, illegal relationships, fake complaints and lying. Again, all this was meant to be a tool to justify something happening after, but these are serious subjects (and one or two more at least which I didn't add to avoid spoilers) and they shouldn't be used this way, as if it's not a big deal after all. Some were addressed and dealt with, but not good enough in my opinion.
The romance was too quick as well, not really gradual but not exactly insta either. We are told Ezra didn't notice Raleigh before, which fine even though they had been working in the same school for a while, but the jump from him noticing her - she had had a crush on him before - to the point where he is wildly attracted to her is too sudden, there is no real emotional development. The relationship itself isn't that bad but without other things it simply felt less than it could.
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