3.5 and 3 Stars for That Week in Acapulco by Gaëlle Cathy #FF #Romance @GCLehane

This short romance is filled with tender moments and it a loving and compassionate story with some very emotional episodes, all tenderly related by the author.

It handles sensitive relationships within the family with compassion and understanding. The author also covers  an emotive and delicate subject with empathy and tenderness.

I liked both characters and found them interesting and believable, their growing romance and the hurdles they had to surmount made a really interesting and enjoyable read.

If I was only reviewing this story I would have awarded it 5 stars, however, the novel came with the added extra of Happy New Life the ex’s story.

Unfortunately I found this very part disappointing. The bitterness felt by the ex I could understand but not the way it was handled by her family and loved ones. Her battle with addiction was handled with little real detail and her eventual new relationship happened so quickly it was not plausible.

I also felt the new relationships within the family were quickly glossed over and a little to contrived.

Although this second part of the novel did bring all loose ends together to me it just seemed a little too forced and inconceivable.

After a really great start, which I thoroughly recommend, and is definitely worth buying, the finale was sadly just a disappointment.

~Chris

I’m a little at a loss with this book. I like the romance between Charlie and Alecia. Both are struggling with their last relationships. We learn quickly that Alecia is still trying to get over the death of her previous partner. There’s a combination here about it being the right time, and something indefinable about Charlie that draws Alecia into things she’s not sure she’s ready for. At the end of that week, they each go their separate ways, not expecting to see each other again. After all, they live on opposite sides of the country. But neither can stop thinking about the other. They start popping in on each other unexpectedly.

It’s when Alecia makes a surprise visit to Charlie that things go off the rails for me. Finally we get the story of Charlie’s previous relationship and wow, it’s a doozy. I think that there should have been some mention or warning about this before I picked the book up, but at the same time I’m not sure that’s something you should put on the outside blurb. Because Charlie’s previous relationship involved incest. Charlie was adopted, and never knew her biological mother, and when an attractive vibrant woman walks into her factory, she falls for her. In the course of falling in love, Emma’s mother confesses to a secret – she’d been raped as a teenager and given away the baby, and never told anybody about it. Charlie and Emma are half-sisters.

It doesn’t bother me that they fell in love, and it doesn’t bother me that they got together before they knew. It bothered me a lot that they kept having a relationship after they knew they were related. It was something I just couldn’t get past. Logically, the taboo of incest was about not combining recessive genes that resulted in genetic flaws that affected the viability of offspring. Illogically, it has been so ingrained in society, and incidentally in me, that I have a very visceral reaction to the idea that they kept having a sexual relationship after they discovered the truth. And as for Alecia, I’m not sure that in her place, I could forgive walking in to the scene she walked in on.

Quite frankly, I liked the romance in this book, but the story was overshadowed for me by the crossing of the taboo. On the other hand, I certainly haven’t stopped thinking about it. There was an additional story in this book that looks like it tells Emma’s story, from after her break up with Charlie. I think I’m going to have to read it.

~Amy P