This book was enjoyable but slow and lacked conflict. I guess since this is based on a real romance the pacing is in line with the real world and not what is normal in a typical romance novel. The book took place over 2 years. The hero and the heroine had some conflicts to overcome so it wasn't all roses. But a typical novel would have focused on just one or two of them and ratcheted up the drama. The Tourette's for example would have played a much larger part in the story with perhaps a scene or so of him hiding it and then having an incident where he actually did almost hurt her. I'm glad that Michael in real life is doing well but it doesn't make for very riveting reading, although I learned something about the disease.

The characters were very nice but because the book was based on real life I was continually wondering if I would really like them in person which I don't normally have to do while reading a romance. They both seemed sweet and with it and heading towards their dreams. I was also glad that the love scenes were not really hot because, as I told my sister, I didn't want to feel like a voyeur.

The writing style was okay but the book did seem more told than shown. And of course it was fairly meandering. Maybe they should be in the regular fiction section instead of the romance section.


I guess finally it comes down to I don't really want to read about real life. My husband and I had an interesting somewhat rocky road to matrimony ourselves and I like to tell others about it but I'm not sure that anyone but ourselves would really like to spend 4 hours reading about it, and I'm pretty sure he would only read it to humor me :-) ( )

While this is not a YA book, I wanted to read this book the moment I saw that the male lead character had Tourette's Syndrome. My son also has Tourette's. Like the main character, Michael, my son has a milder case of TS. I've come to know that it is one of the most misunderstood syndromes out there. However, I love seeing characters with differences in books.

I liked this book a lot. On the cover it claims this book is 'The First Reality Based Romance' and I would have to say that's probably fairly accurate. We don't often find romance books where characters deal with reality based situations such as living with Tourette's, etc. I felt the building up of Anne and Mike's relationship was about right. The pacing of it all was terrific. It was a fire that started out slow and built up over time. I appreciated the fact that Mike's Tourette's really wasn't the focus of their issues, but merely one facet of the challenges they had to face.

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Didn't bother finishing it. ( )