Monday 30 October 2017

Review: Dream On (Dreams Come True #1) by Stacey Keith


Deep in the heart of Texas is a small town where secret wishes have a funny way of coming true . . .

With a nine-year-old daughter, an overdue light bill, and a job slinging burgers while zooming around on roller skates, Cassidy Roby is not living the glamorous life. But Cuervo, Texas, has its charms: quiet streets, loving family, and the down-home familiarity of knowing which of your neighbors are mean as snakes. With Cassidy’s reputation, she knows what will happen if she steps a foot out of line. But how can she help it now that Mason Hannigan’s back in town?

As Cuervo’s high school quarterback ten years ago, Mason was all rock-hard abs and yes-ma’am manners. Now that he’s living the glitz and glory of the NFL, he’s all that plus a couple million bucks. The desire blazing between them is too hot to hide. Cassidy has some experience getting her heart broken by the hometown hero—and having the whole world watch her try to pick up the pieces. Will adding fame, fortune, and paparazzi be a playbook for disaster—or lead to the biggest adventure of her life?

ebook, 251 pages
Expected publication: November 7th 2017 by Lyrical Shine

Terri's Thoughts

I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.  Thank You!

I wanted to like this story, I really did.  The synopsis for the book sounded so compelling and the option were limitless in the direction the story could take.  Sadly, the story did not live up to my expectations.  Here are my reasons why...

1.  I had a hard time believing that the love you feel for someone at fifteen is the eternal kind.  Yes you can look back on the relationships you had in highschool with a certain level of fondness or perhaps even entertaining the idea of "what if" for a moment or two but that is the extent.  I do not know anyone who is still holding that torch ten years later as an adult with responsibilities such a raising a child.  Due to this, I found Cassidy to be almost juvenile.  While I understand that her youth and innocence were taken away too soon, I also think twenty five year olds do not live in a fantasy world.

2.  Again my issue was with Cassidy.  I like my female characters to be strong.  They may have a ton of baggage but at the end of the day they stick up for themselves and those that they love.  For me, I felt Cassidy was a coward who was afraid of anyone judging her.  While she had to bear the judgement of small town/small minds as a pregnant fifteen year old teenager, again, ten years later she should be over it.  The situation with the paparazzi just infuriated me.  Instead of getting mad, as she should have for her daughters sake if not her own, she coward in a corner and got out of dodge at the first opportunity.  She disguised it as protecting your daughter but what kind of message do you send when you run for the hills as soon as things get tough?

3.  Lack of emotional connection.  I felt the reader didn't really get to see an emotional connection between Cassidy and Mason.  Instead it went like this, they lay eyes on each other after 10 years, there is instant lust, they succumb to said lust and all of a sudden it is true love.  Not how the real world works.  I just didn't buy it, their backstory from when Cassidy was fifteen would not be enough (not even remotely) to evolve their relationship as fast as it did.  If the story stayed focused on lust and physical attraction for a bit longer before adding the L word, perhaps it would have been more believable to me.  Also the fact that all they could think about when they were reunited was physical (while that can be somewhat the cases) it does not consume people as much as it did these two.

Now I want to be clear on one thing.  The above reasons are the reason I struggled with this book.  I happen to like books to have an emotional depth before the physical part happens, or at least a little more lead up and this story didn't.  This doesn't mean that others will feel the same.  Those who like to read stories for the physical aspect, and there is a huge market out there of people who do, this very well could be a perfect fit for them.  It simply wasn't what I was looking for.



About the Author


(from her Goodreads profile)

Award-winning author Stacey Keith doesn’t own a television, but reads compulsively—and would, in fact, go stark raving mad without books, most of which are crammed into every corner of the house. She lives with her jazz musician boyfriend in Civita Castellana, a medieval village in Italy that sits atop a cliff, and she spends her days writing in a nearby abandoned 12th century church. But the two things she is most proud of are her ability to cook pasta alla matriciana without burning down the kitchen and swearing volubly in Italian with all the appropriate hand gestures.


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