The premise hit a little too close to home for me. The main character, Katelynn, is a recent college graduate with her Master's in Political Science who decides to go into retail management instead. As I was also a Poli Sci major (got my BA in '98) who ended up going into retail management, I was very familiar with the life our MC was embarking on. Even if I knew nothing about retail management, I feel that the extremely detailed account of exactly what transpires in every facet of a retail store from opening to closing on a daily basis was enough overkill to find anyone bored to tears. I honestly have no idea why most of this was included in the story. It's not relevant to the plot at all. Likewise, very few of the minor characters we are introduced to have anything to do with the plot either. Luckily, you won't be vested in any of them as most of them are just names and brief descriptions of what they look like.
When Katelynn learns she will be learning the ropes from the son of the owner, billionaire Nate, things should start to heat up a little bit. She is clearly interested in him. But we continue to learn about running the store and how they eat lunch together for a really, really long time before she decides to buy a new outfit and catch his attention. I guess that's all she needed to do because he finally asks her out--again 70%ish through the book.
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| Pucker up and wait! (picture via Pixabay) |
I won't ruin the ending by telling you how the date turns out, but I will let you know that there is no ending, which ultimately ruins the book. That is, it's ruined if you care to find out what happens to Katelynn and Nate by the jarring cliffhanger ending anyway. If you read my blog at all, you know I hate books that just stop. This is one of those. There's no tying up of anything, just an abrupt ending. Then, there's a sneak peek into book 2, which is a much more succinct recount of book 1told from Nate's perspective. It still doesn't advance the story very much at all, and at the end, I wasn't scurrying to buy the next book.
There are also some proofreading errors that were annoying. Twice, for example, the number four is inserted into a word for no reason--as in "teen4ger." I don't know how these kinds of errors aren't caught. Spell check will catch that. Something else that really, really bothers me is that, at one point, Katelynn, who is telling the story, actually address us as her "readers." Excuse me? Is this a book or a blog? Talk about taking people right out of the story. I don't know if this is some new literary device Ms. Adams is trying out, but I really didn't care for it. I was under the impression this was a narrative recollection of events in a character's life, not a magazine article. It was just very distasteful, in my opinion. I'd never seen it before and hope that I don't see it again.
Once again, however, I have to say, this book has a ton of four and five star reviews on Amazon. I really don't understand it! A lot of people really like this book, apparently. Maybe they are all twelve year old girls with strong religious beliefs. I don't know. I didn't get it. This was the closest I've been for a while to leaving a one star review. I didn't--I found enough redeemable qualities to give it a two star review, which you can read here. If you find my Amazon review helpful, please vote "yes" for it, as that helps my reviews become more noticeable to readers, such as yourself, who may need to be warned as to what they are getting into. This book is one of six, I believe, so I think it's permafree. It was free when I got it last fall, and it's still free today. You can download it here and see what you think for yourself. It is a quick read, and if you happen to need some information about how to become a manager at your local Walgreens, by golly, this one might just be for you.
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