| Title: | Impasse | |
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| Author: | Sylvie Fox | |
| Publisher | Penner Media | |
| Publication Date: | November 2013 | |
| Publisher's Description | Hot nights, huge consequences. Divorced and done with her dry spell, Holly Prentice is ready to get back in the game. But with two conditions: her future mate can’t be married to his career, and he has to have a couch. Nick Andreis loves his job, and his only furniture is a king-size bed. He’s also single, sexy, and six years Holly’s junior. Any guy this hunky and carefree can’t be serious about the future. After one spontaneous and explosive night, Holly decides that her search for Mr. Right can wait. Nick can be Mr. Right Now. Nick has waited years for Holly. Now that she’s dating again, he’s determined to be the only man in her life. He wants what Holly wants: forever. Convincing her of that won’t be easy, but Nick agrees—with fingers crossed behind his back—to Holly’s idea that they can be bed buddies until someone serious comes along. His plan: use the time between their passionate nights to convince her that he is the one. Will Holly’s unexpected pregnancy change the rules of their games? Or can they both decide to play for keeps? |
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| My rating: | **.5 | |
I loved the first 50% of this book, and then hated almost all of its second half. Initially, Nick was a great character. He’d carried a torch for Holly for a couple of years, and was excited about getting back in touch with her after she’d distanced herself from everybody during her divorce. He made a serious play for her, then recalibrated his strategy once he recognized how hesitant she was to enter into a relationship with a guy six years her junior. I’m Holly’s age, and while I felt that her initial concerns about dating a 26 year old man in LA were valid, I thought she did Nick a disservice, treating him more like an age than a person. Nope. As it turns out, Holly was so, so right.
Nick, whose unspoken thoughts were about how much he loved Holly, who made grand declarations of love, and repeatedly stated his desire to commit totally let her down when she told him that she was pregnant. Nick, the same Nick who confidently said that he was ready to accept whatever came of them not using protection the first time they had sex, dropped the effing ball and turned into the worst caricature of manchild unwilling to grow up and accept responsibility. Although still disappointing, this would have made sense if he’d been the person in the relationships to express doubts about its longtime viability, but he’d spent the entire first half of the book trying to convince Holly that they belonged together, and that he was serious about her. With serious like this, who needs deadbeats? His wishy-washy attempts to justify his awfulness just made me angrier.Since this is a romance novel, I knew that Holly would end up with Nick, but I really wish that some non-asshole love interest would have shown up and illustrated to Drew and Nick exactly how badly they’d each messed up when they mistreated a great person like Holly. I really respect how Holly was able to pick herself up each time life knocked her down, and how she didn’t allow the selfishness of Drew and Nick to embitter her. I really didn’t believe Nick’s change of heart at the end of the book. What finally made him really what a jerk he was being to Holly? I was pretty much done with Nick during the conversation where he told his father Dominic that Holly was pregnant, but I only started to hate him around Thanksgiving.
Sophie and Dominic were the only two supporting characters who had distinct personalities. I really respected how Dominic managed to express his disappointment but still offered his son the emotional support needed to turn Nick back into a semi-decent human being. Sophie was mostly a good friend, although I felt that she gave Nick more credit than he deserved. Drew was more of idea than a person, and even when he showed up, he felt more like a plot device than a legitimate concern. Helena served no purpose that I could see, save to annoy me every time she was on a scene. Asha, Ryan, and Hayes were like so much background noise.
My dislike of the second half of this book greatly affected my ability to enjoy the work as a whole. Also, I wish that the title had stayed In the Nick of Time. I’m pretty sure that having such a cheesy pun for a title would have dissuaded me from reading this book, which might have been for the best. 26 year old men of the world: lose my number.
I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
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