Undeniable by Cherie M. Hudson

Synopsis:
Sit still for a moment. Close your eyes. Listen. Just listen. What do you hear? When I do that, I hear … fuzz. Okay, not really fuzz, but it’s hard to explain what I hear. Put your hands over your ears. Hear that? That’s kind of like what I hear, but not really …

I feel sound. Does that make sense? Being deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other sucks. People think I’m dumb. I’m not dumb. I just can’t hear you. I’ve worked out however, people thinking you’re dumb actually works to your advantage. When people think you’re dumb, they don’t expect anything from you. And when they don’t expect anything from you, you don’t have to engage with them. I’m okay with that.

So why the hell is my sister’s boyfriend’s cousin, an annoying Australian named Caden, so adamant he wants to talk to me? I can’t work out if he’s laughing at me, or if he can see what I can see … the world is worth laughing at. What kind of name is Caden any way?

I also can’t work out why, for the first time ever, I wish I could truly hear the way normal people do. Surely it has nothing to do with the fact I wonder what his heart would sound like beating in his chest if I lay my head on it. I can’t work it out and I don’t like it.

Damn it.

    

My Review:
3.5 stars — I received a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.

Hmmmm…well, this book had its good moments, but overall I was underwhelmed.  I have read the first book in this series, but haven’t read the 2nd one yet.  After reading this 3rd book, I will say that I bet you would get a lot more out of this book if you had read the 2nd one though.  It appears that we meet our 2 MCs in the 2nd book and they interact enough in that book that the hero falls in love with the heroine.  So we start this book without that history, and I think that was a detriment to this story.  I missed out on those first interactions, and so maybe I would have already been rooting for this couple, you know?  As it stands, we just start the book and he’s already in love with her, but we don’t really know why or feel that connection and chemistry.

And I will say that I felt like the book was a bit repetitive at times.  Like the book starts off with both characters talking to the reader and telling them things (like Chase telling us why she is writing off Caden, etc).  And maybe I was just tired and slow, but I’m sure they repeated things multiple times and I was like “you told us that already”.  Maybe it was a stylistic thing, but it didn’t work for me.

As far as characters go, Caden was uber adorable and sweet and easy to fall for.  Add to his awesome personality his love of animals, and I was hooked on him.  It sort of felt like we just skimmed the surface of the things he was dealing with compared with the angst that was Chase, and I kind of wanted to dive into more of him (maybe have him confess to her why he uses humour in tough situations).

Chase, on the other hand, was harder to fall for.  I enjoyed her perspective on being hard of hearing and my heart broke for her at times with the way she was treated (most especially by her father) because of her disability.  But I felt like her attachment to Donald the Dick and that whole sideplot interfered with the love story, and I just stopped feeling any empathy for her character b/c it didn’t feel as authentic anymore that she wouldn’t figure things out.  I get how she got into that relationship in the first place, and I get why she was messed up after it, but still being drawn to him?  Especially after she established a connection with Caden?  Yeah, sympathy lost.

So in the end I’m a bit bummed b/c I absolutely ADORED the first book.  I have a feeling I’d like the 2nd book, so I still have it on my wishlist, but this book just didn’t give me enough to love.  I was also in this weird mode where I was expecting something sinister to happen with either Donald or Doofus, but it didn’t play that way and I’m not sure if that was just my overactive imagination or weird cues from the book.