A review by pinesandpages
Heartbreak for Hire by Sonia Hartl

Did not finish book. Stopped at 14%.

It’s hard to describe specifically why I DNFed this one. It felt very “tell not show” right from the start. I thought the premise would be fun but the straightforward/choppy writing style didn’t work for me. Maybe it was that the protagonist Brinkley also thought in black & white, with quite abrupt decisions that were not thought out on the page so I failed to follow them or see the logic. On her second “date” she is abruptly seduced by the guy, almost immediately? Why? They kiss/lightly grope each other briefly at the bar and somehow Brinkley claims to be on the brink of an orgasm as a result? How. 

Here’s an example of the baffling writing style/lack of logic. Brinkley plans to bump into him at an art supply store, they reach for the same book “accidentally” and exchange 5 (short) sentences each. And then somehow this happens:

“The metal detector.” His low voice held the tremor of a growl, like he was giving me a preview of exactly what he’d sound like when he came.  

This happened on page eighteen, for their SIXTH extremely non-flirty/non-sexual sentence to each other. To be clear, other sentence examples included “Don’t be.” and him saying his name with a “Mark.” So for her to be imaging what he sounded like mid-orgasm was a surprise. It just felt weirdly sexual and completely out of place in the context. “Weirdly sexual” is not something I say often, as I am a gal who loves smut. But again, I think that’s bc I wasn’t “shown” their sexual chemistry, I was “told” it.

This is not a dealbreaker but now that I’m ranting I’ll note this as well: somehow he smelled like “light rain and moonlit nights.” What. At one point he had “storm cloud eyes” and then later they were “the color of tornados.” 

Basically I was frowning for the entire 46 pages so I figured I should DNF.