Almost by Anne Eliot

Almost by Anne Eliot
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3 Stars

I didn't want to judge a book by it's cover, (I've been doing that a lot), so when I read the summary to Almost I was very interested and put the ugly cover in the back of mind.

Jess was almost raped at 14 years old, because of that, she has nightmares, but she doesn't really understand them. Her nightmares has put her in therapy for the past three years, her parents don't want her to go to college until she seems "normal". Jess pays Gray $8K to pretend to be her boyfriend so Jess' parents think she is normal.

I loved the summary, I liked the idea of Gray being paid to pretend to be Jess' boyfriend, because of course they will start to fall for each other and who doesn't want to read that?! The beginning of Almost was very promising, Jess off the bat was introduced and her story line is reveled. I am a big fan when authors from the start tell you everything, because I am interested in Jess and Gray's involvement. I don't really care to find out what happened and within the first few chapters, Anne Eliot tells us everything, which is great.

Towards the middle, things start to slow down for me and I get really annoyed. I felt like there wasn't enough dialogue between Jess' and Gray. I felt like Jess' and Gray's feelings were expressed way too much. There's only so many ways Gray can express his guilt and so many ways Jess can say she's crazy.

I'll admit, I started to skim until I reached the dialogue or interesting parts and let's just say it was starting to look slim. Almost was starting to get monotonousness. I kind of wished the story was told during the school year, instead of a summer break, I felt like Jess and Gray should have been older if the setting was kind of fixed around a working environment.

I didn't really see any chemistry between Jess and Gray, there was enough banter and I love banter, but when the banter never stopped, I got really tired of it. I never really saw shift between Jess and Gray, they seemed to be on constant tension.

I really wanted to like Almost, especially since the beginning had so much potential and I loved the title, but with no chemistry and dry writing, it just didn't work for me.


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