Saturday, May 9, 2015

Review - - A Kiss to Build a Dream On


A KISS TO BUILD A DREAM ON
by Kim Amos
Publisher: Forever
Release Date: March 31, 2015



Willa Masterson returns to her too small hometown humbled and having to start over; and the man she needs to help her restore her mother’s house into a B&B is none other than the man she left twelve years without explanation or apology. Burk Olmstead is waiting for the flighty Willa to get tired of whatever new project she has decided to do in White Pine so he can swoop in and buy the place for himself. His goal is to frighten her off with steep restoration costs and the tedium of details, but Willa is now here for the long haul because she has nowhere else she can go. After spending copious sums of time together, the old spark rekindles into something that has the possibly of destroying them both far more completely than their break up all those years ago.

On the surface, this has my usual hallmarks of a favorite DIK read: second chance love, a humbled character returning to her roots, and amusing secondary characters who will be sure to humble said character a bit more before everything is resolved. This particular book has been a bit of a slow read for me—and if I wasn’t reviewing it, I would have stopped reading by the end of Chapter 2. Reviews on Amazon confirm my feelings—it’s okay, but not great; and Willa takes quite a while for the reader to warm up to. It was page 129 before Willa finally did something I could respect her for and begin to like her as a character.

I’m going to leave it there. I wrote another half page of things that I didn’t agree with in the characterization of the book, but in the end, this is simply a book did not work for me. If you actually attend your high school class reunions (I don’t and I won’t), if you like Minnesota Hot Dish recipes and the cult-like adoration of them (me, not so much), and you like the secondary characters enough to anticipate the books that will likely follow this one, I think you may enjoy this story more than I did. My life filters did not read this book in the light that I believe it was meant.

~Hellie

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for the review... I saw this one at the store and it sounded good but glad to read your review maybe I will hold off on it for awhile

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    1. I think I would suggest trying it at the library before committing. :) Like a popcorn review of "wait for the rental" rather than see it on big screen.

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    1. You're welcome. This said...I did like the secondary characters better than the heroine...and I did think I wouldn't mind reading one of the future books to see the love stories of those characters. The author's writing was good; I just wasn't a fan of the main characters.

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