A Greek Affair — a review

A Greek Affair

More than just a holiday romance?

Her daughter, her job and divorcing her untrustworthy ex are Leah’s main priorities. She isn’t really bothered that her life might be missing a few things. But after winning a prestigious travel blogger award, she’s inundated with offers to review glamorous holiday destinations. Lying around drinking exotic cocktails and being paid for it! What could be better?

Perhaps a romantic trip to idyllic Greece to find the one man who might make Leah risk her heart again…

REVIEW

Linn B. Halton’s A Greek Affair is a saccharine romance.  The FMC is an emotionally strong woman who manages to pick up and keep going, despite betrayals from the people closest to her.  I admire Leah.  She has an inner strength that shines through, but that’s all I really get out of her.  The character doesn’t resonate with me beyond that.  I couldn’t get a feel for her.  She ticked all the right boxes, but seemed to be missing in the flaws that make her really human.

The romance between Leah and Daniel falls kind of flat with me.  I think, mostly, I’m shocked that the romance wasn’t a feature of the book.  I felt like the romance took a back seat to the problems the couple had in their own lives — I’m not sure I felt it develop very much.  It seemed very insta-love without the typical paranormal reasoning behind it.  I feel like somebody who has been betrayed like Leah was, who took that long to actually move forward, would need more than a couple interactions before jumping in feet first.  There’s a lot of ambiguous romantic reasoning behind it, but really…I just didn’t feel like the romance was believable.  It felt shiny and shallow.  And I can’t imagine moving that quickly  when I had to think of my child, as well.  Because despite the fact that  quite a bit of time passes in the story, very little of that passage is actually spent on the romance between the two.  The large gaps in communication that are just forgiven are also hard to get past.  How does a character who distrusts almost everybody get past the fact that she bared her heart and he choked…and didn’t speak to her for nearly 2 months?!

A lot of other interactions between characters felt glossed over, too, so it might just be the style of the author.  The divorce had so much build-up (75% of the book) to have a pretty anticlimactic and predictable end.  The children’s acceptance of the situation and romance is extremely easy.  It all just feels so…easy.  Perhaps it’s my current mood, or maybe I’m becoming jaded, but this makes it difficult for me to read because that ease doesn’t feel real.

The story itself is well-written and sweet.  It was good to see Leah get her happily-ever-after.  A couple of homophone mess-ups (I seem to be fixated on these lately) distracted me, but overall this seems to be a decently edited book.  Grab your copy below!

AMAZON

 

Author Bio –

 

From interior designer to author, Linn B. Halton – who also writes under the pen name of Lucy Coleman – says ‘it’s been a fantastic journey!’

Linn is the bestselling author of more than a dozen novels and is excited to be writing for both Aria Fiction (Head of Zeus) and Harper Impulse (Harper Collins); she’s represented by Sara Keane of the Keane Kataria Literary Agency.

When she’s not writing, or spending time with the family, she’s either upcycling furniture or working in the garden.

Linn won the 2013 UK Festival of Romance: Innovation in Romantic Fiction award; her novels have been short-listed in the UK’s Festival of Romance and the eFestival of Words Book Awards.

Living in Coed Duon in the Welsh Valleys with her ‘rock’, Lawrence, and gorgeous Bengal cat Ziggy, she freely admits she’s an eternal romantic.

Linn is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and writes feel-good, uplifting novels about life, love and relationships.

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