Caroline Abbott works at a high end stationary store that sells a lot of wedding-related stuff, like save the date cards, wedding invitations, and thank you cards. She's used to dealing with bridezillas, so her newest customer, Tiffany, doesn't throw her much, but the identity of Tiffany's fiance does. It turns out that Tiffany is getting married to Alex Wilder, Caroline's first crush. The last time they saw each other was when she was 12 and he was 14. He gave her her first kiss and then disappeared.

It's a shock to see Alex again, especially like this. When she was a kid, Caroline never realized that Alex came from a wealthy family. It's a bit strange that he's getting married so quickly, only a month or so after meeting Tiffany, and he doesn't even seem to like her much. But Caroline tries to be professional, do her job, and not ogle Alex, who is definitely no longer the gawky boy he used to be. Then she accidentally discovers that Tiffany is cheating on Alex, and things become even more complicated.

This was one of my Book Bonanza purchases. I tend to be drawn to illustrated covers, and this looked cute and fun. I went into this expecting a zany romantic comedy in which Caroline and Alex would awkwardly try to reconnect while dodging Tiffany's probably over-the-top attempts at getting revenge against Caroline and/or Alex. Instead, the writing style made me question what genre I was dealing with - Caroline's first person present tense POV felt more chick lit than romantic comedy, to me - and Caroline and Alex's early flirtation, prior to Caroline discovering that Alex was one of her newest customers, had me wondering whether it was actually going to be Alex who cheated first rather than Tiffany.

While Caroline and Alex didn't kiss or even spend much time together until after Alex learned about Tiffany's cheating and ended their engagement, it still felt uncomfortably like Tiffany was set up for failure. She was horrible and annoying and, even so, I felt a bit sorry for her. From the sounds of things, after the initial shine of their relationship wore off, Alex basically stopped paying much attention to Tiffany, spent most of his time at work, and procrastinated on getting her an engagement ring. Yeah, Tiffany was a gold digger who rushed him into a wedding, but he let himself be rushed. It was like he just couldn't be bothered to break up with her and was going to marry her because it was easier than telling her "no."

Which, honestly, didn't make him an appealing romantic hero. The parts of the book from his POV came across as wooden and boring, and my impression of him only worsened after he and Caroline decided to succumb to their attraction to each other. I think readers were supposed to see them as a better, more solid couple than Alex and Tiffany, but instead I saw Caroline as Alex's Tiffany 2.0. Just like with Tiffany, their relationship started off with lots of bouts of fantastic sex (fantastic for them - I considered the first person present tense sex scenes to be gross and stilted). When things got tough just before the end of the book, though, and Alex had to make a decision between trusting and supporting Caroline or doubting her, he chose the latter. It emphasized that these two characters still didn't really know or trust each other, and the happy ending, after Alex did a bit of groveling, felt hollow.

Also, this was a very small part of the book, but I still wanted to bring it up: I didn't like the way the author used Alex's younger brother, James. Alex had two siblings, his sister Meredith and his younger brother James. James was autistic. It was mentioned that he worked as an accountant in the family business and seemed to be pretty good at it. At one point, Alex thought about how James had told him that he felt like their parents were babying him (he still lived with their parents, and it sounded like they were very protective). Alex privately agreed with James...but also expected that James would one day move in with either Meredith or him, so I didn't really see how he was any different from their parents, not even entertaining the idea that James might want more independence. It also bugged me that, while Meredith got a small speaking role in the book, James didn't. For someone who was supposedly so important to Alex, he had almost no presence.

Caroline had a group of friends who all gave off "future heroine in this series" vibes. However, none of them particularly drew me in, and after the issues I had with Save the Date, I have no intention of trying another one of this author's books.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Note: Don't read the character data section at the end of the book until you've finished the novel. There are at least a couple major spoilers.

Naotsugu Toudou is a hero summoned from another world (more than likely ours) to defeat the Demon Lord Kranos. Only the hero has the necessary divine protection required to defeat the Demon Lord, but others may accompany and aid him. All heroes start off at the lowest level and have to work their way up from there. Theoretically, the hero's party members should all be high level, but this party is...different.

Limis Al Friedia is a Level 10 elemental mage who can only use fire magic, even though all elemental mages are supposed to be able to use two different elements. Aria Rizas is a Level 20 swordmaster who recently switched to a completely different school of swordsmanship. Also, even though higher level techniques require at least a little magic, Aria has absolutely no magical ability. (It isn't until nearly the end of the book that readers are finally told that the maximum level for humans is probably 100. I don't consider this to be a spoiler, so I'm mentioning it here for context.)

Ares Crown, the priest assigned to be the group's healer, is the only one with any battle experience. In fact, his level is so high that he worries the rest of the group might use him as a crutch, so he lies and says his level is only 3, the last digit of his true level. He somehow has to get everyone in the party leveled up as soon as possible and keep Nao alive long enough to defeat the Demon Lord, no easy task considering that Nao soon becomes convinced that Ares' assistance is unnecessary.

In terms of flow and general readability this was one of the better light novels I've tried. I never got bored or bogged down by the writing. The battle scenes were relatively easy to follow, and I blew through the whole book much faster than I expected I would. I enjoyed Ares' crankiness, and his "keep moving forward and make the best of the crappy hand you've been dealt" attitude really worked for me.

That said, this book missed the mark in a lot of important ways. For starters, the cover art/title led me to believe that this was going to be a bit lighter and more ridiculous than it actually was. I figured that Ares would be the put-upon healer constantly saving his party members from certain death while the idiots kept obliviously charging forward. There was a little of that, but the brutality and bloodshed kept it from being the light read I expected.

At one point, Ares stumbled upon the aftermath of a fight in a tavern. An aggressive mercenary had freaked Nao out, and, as a result, Nao accidentally maimed nearly everyone in the building. Nao then ran off, basically leaving everyone to die, and only Limis knew that Ares then healed everyone and hushed the whole thing up. This incident was never mentioned again and seemed to make zero impact on Nao. In fact, a short while later, Nao came across a seriously injured monster (secretly injured by Ares, who was hoping Nao would kill it and thereby manage to level up a bit more) and, horrified, said that whoever had hurt it so badly and left it like that must be a monster. There were multiple times in the book where Ares wondered whether Nao was unstable, and I have to say that I wondered that myself. This particular volume provided no answers.

Ares was not a nice guy, and he definitely wasn't a devout priest, but he was absolutely a professional. He did his job, no matter how much the people around him pissed him off. The book included several brutal multi-page scenes in which he beat up and/or maimed monsters and demons, including a monster that looked like a little girl, in an effort to aid Nao or obtain more information (the violence is of the bone-crunching variety, but there is thankfully not much in the way of "gory squishy bits" descriptions). As ruthless as he was, I still preferred him to Nao. It really bothered me that Nao seemed unaffected by the fight at the tavern, and Ares' experience and practicality worked better for me than Nao's boneheadedness.

There were some POV issues. The bulk of the book was first person present tense POV from Ares' perspective, and the author was clearly most comfortable with this. Unfortunately, this resulted in a story that was mostly Ares running around and reacting to things. After a certain point, he was cut off from Nao's party and reduced to guessing where they might go next and what they might do. He was also in the dark as far as the Church went - Cardinal Creio kept saying that the Church had its reasons for assigning Ares to this job, and Ares just had to keep doing his best despite everything. His POV also put limitations on the things readers got to learn about the other characters. Ares wasn't the sort of person who made friends, and he really didn't care about anyone around him, beyond what their level of usefulness might be in battle. I had a better idea of most of the female characters' breast sizes than their personalities.

And speaking of breasts... I think the only female character whose breasts weren't described was maybe the one female mercenary. For a guy who seemed to care more about work than about romance or sex, Ares sure noticed breasts a lot. The breast thing irked me but was mostly ignorable, until the end, when it was revealed that leveling up could affect at least one character's breast size. Yes, the author wrote magically growing breasts into this world. ::sigh::

The overall world was painfully generic, the breast thing was annoying, and there was more bone-crunching violence than I expected. Still, there were some intriguing aspects that might prompt me to at least read the next volume. There are indications that Nao might morph into a more interesting and difficult-to-handle villain than the Demon Lord. There were brief mentions of Ares' workaholic tendencies being his biggest weakness - he isn't good at or used to delegating work, and he uses holy energy on himself to keep himself going past the normal limits of human endurance. This particular volume didn't really demonstrate the drawbacks of his way of operating, and I'm hoping that future volumes do a better job of digging into this some more. Volume 4's cover art features most of the female cast in bikinis, though, so that isn't very encouraging.

Extras:

• Character data for most of the book's prominent characters. The only information not included that I would have liked to see was character ages. There was a bit on page 30 that seemed to indicate that Ares was only 18 years old, and that can't possibly be right.
• An afterword written by the author.
• Several black-and-white illustrations throughout. 
• A couple color illustrations on a folded sheet at the beginning of the book. The illustrator seems to have forgotten that Amelia's hair is supposed to be blue.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

I appreciate a romance that is acerbically funny rather than cloying and this one gets bonus points for a main character and her romantic interests who are middle aged and dealing with all the life issues that go with it. The characters, their relationships, and the events felt real and not too improbable and the dialogue was snappy. I enjoyed it so much that it mostly overcame the usual fatal flaw of having been written in first person, present tense. Normally, I’ll DNF those immediately, but I was actually able to forget the style and fall into the story for the most part.

Audiobook, borrowed from my public library. Audiobooks read by the author tend to be pretty hit/miss, but MacMillan did a terrific reading, especially with the dialogue.

I hate first person present tense. Even worse, though, is a story told from the alternating viewpoints of five separate characters, when all five use first person present tense. ALL FIVE. The only exception is the opening passage, which is written from the moon’s (literally, the moon) POV… in third person present tense. Hell, for all I know, we are also treated to the dog and the imaginary friend as narrators in first person present tense, but I only got to page 37 before I closed the book and threw it across the room at the garbage can.

Paperback, which has been sitting unread on my bookshelf for so long that I no longer remember when or why I even bought it. I suspect it was a recommendation from the (now defunct) Books on the Nightstand podcast.

Et tu, Jojo?

I've found books by Moyes to be light escapist romance-ish fiction, always good for lifting my spirits. So imagine my sense of betrayal to find that she's jumped on the First Person Present Tense bandwagon. 

Just say "no", Jojo. Please.