It's been just over 2 years since I read the first book in this series and I remember seriously loving it. I stayed up half the night to read it. I can't say I feel the same about this one. It was an okay read.
This book is Andrew and Owen's story. Andrew is one of the guys who lives in the house with Cole (who moved out at the end of book #1), River, Tomas, Marc, Brendan, who was in the first book but has now been replaced by Sandy and if you want to know why read the book of course;)
Owen is Brendan's brother and he's come to Ocean Vista to escape his own problems as we as find out more about the brother he'll never know. To me this all had the potential to add up to a really good story. Sadly it didn't.
I enjoyed the part about Andrew entering the reality TV cooking show. But once that was over things began to seriously drag for me and it was due mostly to the parent factor.
I get that for very different reasons both Andrew and Owen have really strong family ties...I really, really got that way before the end of the book, I felt like this point had been well and truly pounded into my brain. In fact I did an count and there were in fact '69' references to just Owen's 'mama' in this book...this does not include anything to do with his biological mother, Andrew's mother or any other mother who may have wandered through and '68' references to his 'daddy'. I'm glad Owen had loving and supportive family truly I am but I honestly did not need them to be front and center in this story for me to get the point...and can I just say this is the first and hopefully the only time that I will ever complain about awesome parents. But it was just too much.
Sadly Andrew's family didn't feel like they were far behind when it came to page time and that was...depressing to say the least because his 'mama' seriously needs some counselling. Ok, I think I've belabored that point sufficiently...my point is simply that too much page time for the parents spoiled the story for me...well, that and I just didn't really feel the love between Owen and Andrew and even this was due largely because of the parent factor.
I felt an occasional spark...maybe saw a little glimmer from time to time but just about the time it started to really gel for me...the parents got dragged back out. So, while I did enjoy the first part of the book and Owen and Andrew, a bit. I just didn't fully get into the story and while I don't really feel like I needed to read this one in order to get into the next one, I'm still glad that I took the time to read Andrew and Owen's story. It was nice just not awesome for me.