He’d met the love of his life at age eight.

This will make very little sense, I promise.

I really, REALLY want to give this a three. Because there's a lot to appreciate about a book serving a predictable, schmaltzy storyline (which I'm a sucker for) with the visible effort to avoid the go-to pitfalls of this cliche-infested genre. The love triangle, the slut shaming, the insta-love were all thankfully missing from this novel.

But I just can't. 

At it’s core Lex and Lu had the usual suspects and familiar ingredients of a Marchetta contemporary: two families intertwined, childhood friends to lovers to distant strangers, the second chances they are given, the devastating secret, the meddling parents, the secondary love story between the heroine’s sister, Willa and the hero’s brother, Pete. Hell, somebody even dies. 

Except everyone’s an asshole to Lex and he does a very good job at being an asshole back.

And everyone’s telling me Lu’s this intellectual brainiac because she has a doctorate on something something psychology and uses big words like ‘antiquated’ in regular conversations.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This is my third surf-themed contemporary romance read so far and I really have no explanation why I keep picking them up. Maybe its my non-tanning, sedentary Asian ass' way of living vicariously through the pages. Or maybe it's my inexplicable attraction towards the blonde, bodacious (somebody needs to kill that word. Yesterday.) half-naked men (or just droopy pretty male nipples, really) in their covers. I also have an unhealthy love for Garlic-flavored SPAM for which I also have no excuses for, but I'm pretty sure one has something to do with the other. In my previous attempts at this very specific, very alien genre, I can't say my unnameable expectations had ever been met and this book unfortunately continues with that tradition.