And that’s just the first few minutes of her work day.
Thirty-one-year-old proofreader Bailey Mitchell is a slave to her tics. She inherited Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder from her father, and it’s done nothing but inhibit her love life. She’s run the gamut of boyfriends—none of them willing or able to cope with her condition.
Enter 32-year-old Reece Powell, her new coworker at Beach Elite Marketing Firm. He’s more than willing to cope. He finds her habits cute and quirky . . . for now. Reece wins her over, and life coasts along for them until Bailey experiences a devastating blow. Tragedy exacerbates her OCD, and Reece realizes her tics aren’t so cute and quirky anymore. Just like all the others, he has the choice to leave.
But Reece isn't like all the others.
The Wilmington Saga
Follow the stories of Wilmington, NC residents as they fall in and out of love, mend and break hearts, grow, change, lose, win, and experience what it means to truly live in this small coastal community.
I am in love with S. Walden's writing. I have been for a while. When I heard that her new book was going to be a departure from what I was used to reading from her I wasn't sure what to think. I have come to expect angsty forbidden romance whenever I hear her name, so getting something else was a little scary for me. I'm pretty set in my ways. I was more than impressed with LoveLines. Summer in no way took a departure from her writing style. The subtle nuances that she puts into her writing were still all there. I was VERY happy about that! LoveLines still isn't your typical romance, even with the departure from the forbidden. It still deals with topics that are a little beyond the ordinary, which is something that Summer has completely mastered.
All of the character development in this book was stellar. I never questioned the motives of anyone while reading. I felt like the portrayal of all the secondary and tertiary and periphery characters were spot on, there was no change in motive and from the second anyone entered the picture I knew exactly where they stood with Bailey and Reece.
Bailey has OCD, not 'Oh, my house is always spotless, I'm so OCD!', actual anxiety producing, abnormal ritual OCD. It was nice to see it portrayed in such a realistic way. OCD isn't pretty and it isn't easy. (If you have never had to completely put your life on hold so that you could go back and count the number of cracks on the sidewalk and how many steps you took between them, over and over, until the number was 'perfect', you are probably OCD free.) Not for the person suffering from it and not for the people that live around the sufferer. Bailey has spent most of her life suffering with the disorder. Knowing that people won't 'get' her, that she is hard to live with. She has been dealt severe blows because some of the people who were supposed to love her the most weren't able to deal with her tics.
Enter Reece. Long before Bailey tells him, hell long before he really knew her, he was fascinated by her, her tics and the affects of her OCD. Reece is far from normal himself and he finds something endearing about Bailey's disorder. He does whatever he can to understand it and to help her manage it. There were some moments in the book where he didn't do the right thing, but no one can be perfect all of the time. Reece also had his own problems to deal with and he needed Bailey's help to get past them. His vulnerability when showing her that he was far from perfect himself completely endeared him to me.
LoveLines completely revolved around Bailey and Reece's relationship. There wasn't a lot of outside action, and I loved it! Sure there were other things going on, but those events were never the focus of the plot in anyway. God knows that Bailey had enough of her own stuff going on to propel the book forward and I am really glad that was the driving force. Even when devastating events took place it was still all about Bailey and her disorder and how Reece was helping her and loving her. It was quite refreshing to have the characters be the focus rather than some outside influence.
I loved this book and am very much looking forward to the rest of the series. LoveLines is a completely story and can be read as a stand alone, but after reading the very non-cliffhanger (for Reece & Bailey) epilogue, I can't see how anyone wouldn't want to continue with the next book.
PRE-ORDER
I live in a cul-de-sac in an old neighborhood filled with one-story brick homes. They’re small—no bigger than 1500 square feet—but the perfect size for a single woman tired of paying rent. I bought my house two years ago. I’d started saving for a down payment eight years before that. I thought my mother would be so proud of me for purchasing my first home—on my own—but she was more concerned about the people to fill it.
“Just me, Mom,” I had said during my housewarming party. It included my dad, younger sister, some coworkers, a few friends from college, and Erica’s crew.
“Not even a roommate, Bailey? At least get a roommate. I mean, what’s the point of two bedrooms if it’s just you?”
“Office space,” I replied.
“Office space for what? What do you need an office for? Do you take work home with you? Do they make you work nights and weekends at that place? Honey, let’s talk about the sales job. Remember that sales job I told you about?”
“Mom, I’d be working more in sales. Do you understand? We’ve been over this. Days. Nights. Weekends. Holidays. Vacations. That’s a sales job!”
“Honey, this job is different. Now I gave Archie your number. He said he’ll call you—”
“Oh my God! I just bought a house, Mom! Can we focus on the house?!”
Yeah. So that’s how most of the conversations went with my mother.
S. Walden used to teach English before making the best decision of her life by becoming a full-time writer. She lives in Georgia with her very supportive husband, who prefers physics textbooks over fiction and has a difficult time understanding why her characters must have personality flaws. She is wary of small children, so she has a Westie instead. She is the USA Today bestselling author of Going Under. When she's not writing, she's thinking about it.
She loves her fans and loves to hear from them. Email her at swaldenauthor@hotmail.com and follow her twitter feed at @swaldenauthor.
No comments:
Post a Comment