CM Doporto

This book was just O.K. Not great, but ok.

The first 3/4 of the book or so read very much like a Spanish Soap Opera, which I didn't particularly care for. The reactions each character had were very dramatic and emotional, and not very realistic (especially the main character, Natalie). Each scene gave a clear picture of overly dramatic people, and picturing it as anything but a Soap was very difficult...

The writing was not realistic at all- the dialogue was some-what cheesy, and irritating, show more and had a lot of phrases that didn't make much sense. For example, Ryan is supposed to be a Southern Texas cowboy, yet many of his lines read like a surfer guy from SoCal...then he'd have a random line like "this condo is kickin'" ...what??

It seemed very disjointed and confused- like the characters aren't completely defined, and very unsettled.

It also somewhat seemed like a book written by a dictionary...every phrase was something you'd expect to hear from a proper English professor...not college Freshmen (even if some of them were nerds...). It just wasn't very believable or realistic, and got to be somewhat monotonous in tone.

The reason I'm giving it 3 stars instead of 2, is because once the plot got going (past the monumentally frustrating main chunk of the book with a lot of redundant personal challenges and internal turmoil from the main character) toward the end of the book, it actually got interesting. I hate when books leave on a cliff-hanger, but it did leave me wanting to read the next book, now that there's more of a story than "Oh my, I'm so afraid to trust anyone, but gosh darn it, you're sexy, and I just want to bang you so bad, who cares?!" *fake Southern accent there*.

I'm hoping the next book will be better, and since I am still considering reading the series, I'm leaving it a 3 star instead of 2.

I'd recommend it if 1) you don't mind cheesy Soap Opera plots and dialogue to trudge through til the last few chapters, and, 2) the next book in the series/the series all together, sounds interesting to you. show less

This story starts off with a bang. Natalie has been through some things - and from the sounds of it, she's not ready to talk about it!

Instantly jumping into her internship, she's at a vitamin company and decides to offer herself up as a guinea pig for the new vitamins.

But these vitamins aren't like normal vitamins and nothig is the same after!

The story really does start off pretty quick. You don't get a lot of intro with the characters, but luckily there aren't too many to keep track of.

And show more Natalie and Lise are really cute. They are your typical girls just getting through college and doing an internship they were lucky enough to land with a big corp. Their banter and parties are fun and easy to read.

They bump into Sal and Ryan right off at the internship and, instantly, their chatting and bonking heads are so sweet and not at all awkward - not even the electric jolt and the near passing out.

This story is a great adventure and kept me turning the pages. The mascerage ball sounded amazing! And I liked that all of the elements of the story seemed to progress naturally and didn't seem forced or awkward at all.

I'm so glad I gave this story a chance.

thank you to [a:CM Doporto|6876569|CM Doporto|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1357249790p2/6876569.jpg] for offering a free copy in exchange for an honest review. show less

The book is well-written, but it moved way too slowly for me and I lost interest. The characters were realistic.

There was an interesting concept to this story. Though, I think that it’s a concept better fleshed out in a longer piece. I’m a fan of short stories, but I feel that this one was in need of a little world building at the very least.

While reading questions continued to pop into my head about just what kind of events lead to this alien race coming into control in the way they did. Also, the use of the term “state of the art” occurred often, but there was nothing to base that off of. show more This was obviously a futuristic story, but what is state of the art when it comes to a world that’s already going to be state of the art to the reader of today?

I also had questions arise near the end (which I won’t get into due to them spoiling things). The characters knew more than I did as a reader, and I think that it limited my understanding of why some themes were brought up in the end.

All in all, with me still having questions and also zipping right through this one, I think I’ll be looking forward to book 2, “The Coming,” when it is released. show less