I really wanted to like this book. This is the second Carly Phillips book I have read and both of them are right in the middle as far as likability goes. I neither liked it nor disliked it. The two main characters are just ok to me. Zoe is ex-secret service and is currently opening up her own buisiness with her friend and brother in law. Ryan is a lawyer born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
When Ryan finally finds what happened to his long lost sister who ran away over 16 years ago he is saddened to find she has died but amazed to find she left a daughter behind. A daughter that he will take back to his family and "save" from the foster system. What he doesn't realize is that Sam, his niece, is almost fully adopted by the Costas family. Zoe's own parents are her foster parents and are getting ready to sign and make her officially part of their family.
The Costas family is a trip. They are down to earth with enough kookiness to make reading about them interesting. Perhaps it is their Greek heritage. Reading it I was reminded about the family dynamics in the Movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Not a complete paralell but enough to help me draw a little bit of a connection.
What I liked about this book was the way Phillips was able to create a family out of words and make them real to me. Very vividly colored you might say. This was the same feeling I got when reading The Playboy. I found that the family was interesting and I wanted to read about them. There is another book that came before this one (Under the Boardwalk) which is about Zoe's twin sister which I might read to get another dose of the Costas family.
What I didn't like was that just like my feeling in The Playboy the romance of the two main characters took a backseat to my interest in the family as a whole. I found that I really didn't care if they two got together romantically or not but I guess if they were going to that was ok too. Either way, I was fine with it.
Another thing was that I didn't really like Zoe. I thought she should have been a little more alpha female with her background as an ex secret service member. Perhaps not a scary female body builder wrestler alpha but maybe a little more decisive about her and Ryan's relationship.
Overall I would rate this book 3 stars. I was thinking 2.5 but liked Mama Costas so much she got an extra half just for being interesting to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment