8 Weeks by Bethany Lopez

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Title: 8 Weeks
Author: Bethany Lopez
Series: Time for Love #1
Published by: Indie
Release Date: February 25, 2015
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: Beth Stewart
Length: 4 hours and 26 minutes
Genres: Romance, Contemporary
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2019 Audiobook Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ iTunes
My rating:

Blurb:

Is eight weeks enough time to earn back the love of someone you've betrayed...the only one you've ever loved?

Shelly has been in love with Cal since they started dating in eleventh grade. Despite everyone saying that the odds were against them, they got married after graduation and built a life together. Now, six years later, she is faced with the ultimate betrayal. Devastated, her first instinct is to call it quits…

After a drunken binge at his best friends’ bachelor party, Cal betrays the one person who has always been there for him, his wife, Shelly. Terrified and realizing she might divorce him, Cal must come up with a way to prove to her that his love is true…

Cal asks Shelly for eight weeks. Eight weeks to convince her that their marriage is worth the fight. Will Shelly be able to trust him again, or will their marriage end the way many others do when faced with opposition… In divorce?

8 Weeks is book 1 in the Time for Love series, but can be read as a stand alone.

My Review:

3 stars — This is my first book by this author and this narrator, and I will admit I was wary about the subject matter.  Cheating is a hard no subject for me, and the entire book is predicated on an act of cheating by the hero.  But I read a review by another cheating hater who mentioned that this one made her think and didn’t bother her as much, so I gave it a try.  And I will admit that my feelings on the cheating were a lot more complicated than I expected, so it delivered to a certain degree.

But honestly?  I was bored.  For a short book, this one dragged for me.  There was a lot of back and forth on the same feelings, bringing up the same problems over and over, and I just didn’t connect with our characters as much as I’d hoped I would.

Part of the problem for me (personally) was the narration style.  Ms. Stewart has a bit more of a straightforward narration style, where there’s not a lot of inflection and emotion…for me it comes across flat.  I prefer a more acted style.  I found it really hard to feel anything, because I couldn’t get a grip on the depth of emotions that I was looking for.  Her different voices were not bad.  I’m less a fan of dual POV books being narrated by just one narrator, but at least she narrated the chapters in Cal’s head in his voice as well, which I really appreciated.  But other than that, I won’t be seeking out more books from her.

As for Cal and Shelly?  I actually felt more for Cal, which surprised the shit out of me.  I mean, I still don’t quite understand what happened…because I tend to be of the belief that even when drunk, someone who would NEVER cheat just wouldn’t end up in that situation.  I couldn’t help but wonder if he was taken advantage of, just from the way the author described Cal’s dedication to his marriage and Shelly.  It just didn’t make sense.  But if I just sort of accepted that it happened, I really loved how Cal showed Shelly how important she was, how sorry he was, and my heart ached for him, because he truly felt all the regret and despair over his discretion.

Shelly…well, I felt for Shelly initially.  But as time went on, I was unimpressed with her.  She made a lot of mistakes in how she treated Cal in those 8 weeks, and she didn’t feel much remorse.  Obviously it wasn’t on the same level, but I was really disappointed with her in the end.

I enjoyed some of the dates, and some of the sweet stuff…but in the end it just didn’t feel like there was enough plot to move the story along.  And I wasn’t invested enough in the inner turmoil of our MCs, so it just felt repetitive in the end.

The friends were intriguing, but I’m less interested in TJ and Sasha’s story than in Scott and Gabby’s…  I might come back to them later, but I’m not feeling a rush.  And the samples for the next narrators don’t sound like a match for me either, so I’d have to just read them.

So yeah.  It was a solid okay book.  Some good parts, but nothing really memorable.  And I truly do think that my disconnect with the narrator hurt my enjoyment a bit.  Ah well.  I’ll try a different series by this author…