Elaine White's Life in Books

Book – Falling (follow up to Someday and Delicious, respectively)
Author – Sierra Riley
Star rating - ★★★★☆
No. of Pages – 354

Cover – Nice
POV – 3rd person, dual POV
Would I read it again – Yes

Genre – LGBT, Contemporary, Bakery, Series, MM, Romance


** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK, BY THE AUTHOR, IN RETURN FOR AN HONEST REVIEW **


As I've read quite a few of Sierra Riley's books now, I know to avoid the Prologue like the plague. I absolutely hate being given a sex(y) scene between two MC's that I don't know or care about, implying things that I have no knowledge of and ruining the big “first time together” moment of the novel, by showing it at the beginning of the book. It's such a waste of the plot arc, of the whole “will-they-won't-they” that the book is all about, because the Prologue literally tells you 'they will'.

So, onto the rest of the story. I'm so glad I avoided the Prologue right off, because the story made so much more sense without it spoiling the story. Knowing Jeremy from previous books, I was surprised to find that this serious, responsible, workholic (the view we'd been given of him in previous books) man had suddenly become a fangirling teenager, with no work ethic and outrageous twelve-year-old thought processes.

Although I enjoyed the story, this Jeremy's POV scenes were a chore to read. Mostly because of the frustratingly juvenile thinking. It wasn't just a one off, which could have been ignored and excused, but repeatedly throughout the book we were given these long ass sentences with a) b) c) options that were ridiculous. They became ridiculously massive, almost half page ONE sentences. Repeatedly. This is the first and worst of them:
“Especially because a) he'd just broken up with yet another disaster of a boyfriend, and therefore had some time on his hands, b) summer was coming, and even though, in a perfect world, Jeremy would get to wear sweaters and jeans year-round, that wasn't going to fly in the heat and humidity that Tulsa was preparing to inflict on him in a couple of months, and therefore, c) he was much more likely to find his next trainwreck-of-a-boyfriend-who-just-might-finally-be-The-One if he managed to tone up before shorts season finally hit, and d) for real, he didn't even care if that was shallow, although of course he wouldn't say no to finding True Love along the way, and besides, e) Gavin had a free guest pass for the gym he went to, and f) it was much less intimidating to think of going to the gym with a friend, because g) the truth was, Lucy was right, and not only did Jeremy not exercise regularly, but he was also clueless about what to do with all the machines and weights and things that were sure to be found there, so g) …
Wait, had he already done “g”?”

And that, for one, is part of the reason I didn't give this a 5 star, of which it actually deserved. For me, if I can't take a breath while reading a page, then I don't want to read it. NO sentence in ANY book should ever be that long. And no man of twenty-eight (maybe 29, I can't remember) should say “dude”, “for real” and name himself “J2oh”. Oh, and no one should ever think in this ridiculous length a) b) c) format. Never mind talk in Capital Letters the way that Jeremy does, frequently. One more issue with Jeremy's thought process was
that everything
had to have
it's own line
because everything
was just so
f'ing important.
You know what I mean?

When it comes to the plot, the GFY was a little tropey, very sudden and quite honestly unnecessary. Riley could easily have gotten away with making Nick bisexual and hesitant about starting a relationship with a gym client, to achieve the same time delay in their hooking up. Not once, from the moment they met to the moment that Nick instigated sex with things no straight man would unquestioningly do without some serious soul searching, did I ever believe he was straight. There was no hesitation, no “research” or soul searching, as I just mentioned, that could have convinced me that this was a serious decision that had to be made or something that was even a little unusual for him. It felt far too much like – see Jeremy, want Jeremy, play hard to get, take Jeremy.

There were a few editing issues, other than the fact that someone with sense should have warned Riley against that stupid repetitive a) b) c) format above. These included missing full stops, mislabelling of characters (Nick instead of Beck etc) spelling and grammar issues and silly things, like this:
“Hmmm,” Jeremy hmmm'd.
Well, yeah. We noticed that. He said “Hmmm”, so I'm pretty sure that I know “Jeremy hmmm'd” without having to be told that. Gee.

Sticking with the bad things, before we venture to the good, I really hate when authors (this one included, since it's happened in their other books) try to trick the reader, as if we're stupid. I mean, it's always obvious when something is a dream. They're not fooling anyone, so why can't they separate the “dream” state from the “reality” and just make it how it should be? No one is fooled that this suddenly-hooking-up and this-can't-be-real moment is actually real. It's not and we know it.

There was also a really uneven division of POV's. Jeremy sort of disappeared from the story for about 20% at a time, while Nick's POV took over. It was a good thing, at times, to give us a break from a) the annoying lists, b) the this-can't-be-my-life words with dashes every five minutes and c) the Super Annoying capitalization of Supposedly Important Words. But it still meant that we had no idea what Jeremy was getting up to for a huge chunk of the story.

~

So, finally, we can get onto the good stuff.

Yes, I love a good “be my fake boyfriend” routine and how this one came about was pretty funny and very realistic. Everyone hates reunions and wants to be better than they are, just to shove it to all the people who ignored them or didn't like them in high school. The fact that Jeremy did his lying on Facebook, while drunk with Danny, was a good bonus and a believable “slip” for his usually composed, non-playful attitude.

I liked Jeremy and Nick, as main characters. Though certain things bugged me to no end, I did actually like them and how they interacted with each other. There was real chemistry and legitimate reasons for them not to be together, then for them to be together. I still think it happened too fast, but hey-ho, can't have everything.

The story also did a pretty good job of dealing with Nick's big secret. Not only in the reveal, which took forever, but in the way that it was handled and not “cured”, as though it was something that could be.

Overall, probably the closest to Someday, which I loved, but with enough frustrating points that it just couldn't match the five star of the first book in this series.