May 22, 2019 | No Comments
I Have Never
by Camilla Isley
Date Published: July 13, 2017
Published By: Pink Bloom Press
Page Count: 224
Publisher’s Description:
Twenty-nine-year-old Blair Walker is a girl with a plan, or more a girl with a list. A list of dos and don’ts to live the perfect life, land a dream career, and marry Mr. Right.
When Blair loses her job and gets dumped by her boyfriend all in one day, she starts to wonder if she’s had it all wrong. And what better way to find out than experience everything the list forbade?
Never Lie
Never Pick a Fight
Never Make a Scene
Never Make the First Move
Never Make Impulse Decisions
Never Mix Business and Pleasure…
With hilarious consequences, Blair will discover some items are trickier to tick off than she’d thought…
A laugh out loud romantic comedy perfect for fans of Lindsey Kelk, Sophie Kinsella, and Mhairi McFarlane.
My Star Rating:
My Review:
I Have Never by Camilla Isley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I feel like I had some mixed feelings throughout this book as I was reading it.
I feel like it started out pretty strong. The very beginning was like a really good one-two-punch kind of thing, like it came out swinging and really set up the stage for good conflict in the story right out of the gate. And then it kind of coasted for a bit.
My note at 32% said this: “I keep going back and forth between LOL and …seriously?
It feels pretty light and fun, sort of Devil Wears Prada meets … Beauty and the Briefcase? But I keep wanting something a little deeper and beyond the surface. Definitely slow burn but not really any significant hint yet of heat, so it feels a bit dragging. Give me something I can hang onto soon, please!”
Up until a little past halfway through, I was struggling with sticking with the story because it was a little too slow of a “slow burn” for my taste. I kept wanting to see SOME kind of hint that these two characters actually liked each other and not just a one-sided, unrequited kind of thing.
There was even one point, one in my opinion rather egregious incident where I would have been completely done as in point of no return, no looking back, I’d have been done. But ol’ girl Blair wasn’t done, and I’m glad I kept reading because it was almost like the author really got into her groove at this certain point, and I really enjoyed the rest of the book from that point forward.
But … As much as I love dogs, I feel like the dog could have been left out of this story and it wouldn’t have detracted anything. I think it made the cheese factor a little too much for me the way it was written into the story. The dog can understand English? Lol
But there was a particular game of “Never Have I Ever” that turned into “Truth or Dare” at one point that totally turned things around for me with this story and won me over. Very realistic, and I loved how the tension built up higher and higher in that scene. That was the point when I decided I really liked this book.