Sweet Home by Tillie Cole

Synopsis:
At age twenty, Molly Shakespeare knows a lot.

She knows Descartes and Kant.

She knows academia and Oxford.

She knows that the people who love you leave you.

She knows how to be alone.

But when Molly leaves England’s grey skies behind to start a new life at the University of Alabama, she finds that she has a lot to learn — she didn’t know a summer could be so hot, she didn’t know students could be so intimidating, and she certainly didn’t know just how much the folks of Alabama love their football.

When a chance encounter with notorious star quarterback, Romeo Prince, leaves her unable to think of anything but his chocolate-brown eyes, dirty-blond hair and perfect physique, Molly soon realises that her quiet, solitary life is about to dramatically change forever…

    

My Review:
2.5 stars — Well I am mega bummed.  This book was HIGHLY recommended by quite a few friends and fellow reviewers I follow on Goodreads.  So highly recommended (the series as well as the book), that I bought like the first 4 books (or 3 books and Rome’s book) when they went on sale.  And like 10% in I was tempted to DNF it.  Seriously.  The only reason I didn’t was because I had the next few books, and I kept hoping that it would get better somehow.  But unfortunately, my initial impression lasted right to the very end.

So what didn’t work for me?  *grumble* The better question would almost be what did work for me.  *sigh*  OK.  So….where to start.  The characters all felt a little 2 dimensional to me.  And I mean right from the secondary characters up to the main characters.  I could see an attempt at making the MC’s 3 dimensional with their tragic backgrounds and such, but I just didn’t end up feeling that much empathy for them.  They felt flat.  They felt like caricatures.

And maybe I’m way off base, but the way the characters were portrayed (their actions, the way they talked) just felt very much like a stereotype of the south.  I saw someone else quote a line from Cass in their review, and I was like “YES!!  EXACTLY!!!  Mama wants a taco???  WHAT???”  I didn’t highlight them, but I was constantly cringing with the dialogue.

And speaking of Cass and Lexi (and to a lesser extent Ally), what in the world brought them together as friends with Molly??  Seriously, I didn’t feel the friendship chemistry at ALL.  It felt like they were just friends b/c they were intially rooming together, but there was nothing in common, and so I just didn’t buy into their concern all the time.

Back to the MCs — they felt SOOOOOO volatile and overdramatic to me.  Like, the emotional swings were making me feel nauseated.  Molly would jump to the most over the top conclusions with very little nudge in that direction, and then rush off all upset…and then Rome would come barrelling through yelling and apologizing and then it was “I love you I love you, never leave me”…”I’ll never leave you or run away again”…only to be repeated in a few chapters.  OK, so I might be over simplifying, but that’s just the way it read to me.  And OMG, I could see the conflicts coming from a mile away, and they felt contrived so that we would have strife, when really some common sense would have avoided everything.

And the bad guys were the worst caricatures of them all!!  It just wasn’t believable to me.

And I’ve never been a big Alpha guy girl (I don’t usually mind them, but I don’t seek them out), but am I seriously the only one who felt that Rome’s behavior was borderline abusive at times?  He SCREAMED at her and YELLED at her, and told her to be quiet, and I get that he was mad and upset, but WOOSH!  And his anger issues were crazy!  And she’s just supposed to miraculously make them go away???  I don’t know….

OK stop Lenore.  You’re starting to rant.  I’m sorry.  I really am.  I just had these huge hopes for this series, and to have them dashed on the first book is honest to god heartbreaking for me.  And OK, I’m probably being a little harsh on the bad qualities.  It had potential, it just didn’t live up to it at all for me.  I honestly knew from the prologue that the writing wasn’t going to work for me.  It was overly saccharine and…something that I just can’t seem to articulate.  *sigh*

Want to hear the worst part?  I’m reading Sweet Rome, b/c I just want to know what was going on in Romeo’s head!!!  I probably still won’t enjoy it that much, but I already have the damn books, so I figure I’ll give it one more go before giving up.  Maybe it was just this one.  Maybe they get better?  I don’t know.  I’m grasping at straws here.  I even have other books by this author…it will kill me if I find out I just don’t match well with her writing style.