Kelly is a pretty reserved person. She adheres to routine and rarely does anything spontaneous. She plays her cello and lives a pretty normal life of routine. Enter Ren, our friendly hero, who plays guitar for his band Loose Ends and has the eye stud and a few tattoos of rebellious youth to support the stereotype. He lives next door to Kelly. I liked Ren a lot. Very talkative fellow, manages to bulldoze himself into Kelly’s apartment and fires off all kinds of questions. The getting– to– know-you-type questions. Then things get serious when they start to play a game of Truth/Dare leading to a night of white-hot passion. After their one night stand, Ren knows that he wants to get to know Kelly a little better (like he doesn’t already?) and Kelly is unsure if she wants Ren in her life (should of thought of that before you let him in the bed, eh?). Anyway, the romance is hindered with the morning after feelings of anxiety, uncertainty and misunderstandings. This is a pretty quick story but it’s not without it’s problems.

Again, ran into some editing issues for example the color of the hero’s hair. One moment it was described as brown and next, spiky black? It may seem petty to some but editing errors does throw readers such as myself out of the story which is not a good thing. Another is the usual contrivances that plague romance novels — Kelly’s feelings were quite contradictory. Such is love, right? Also, this author’s favorite word phrase seems to be “crotch clutching” and I will never get use to the p-word. The other p-word. That’s just my personal issues. Le sigh.

However, there were many  good points like great character development especially for Ren, the hero. I really liked him which was the biggest draw for me to this story.  Dialogue was great. Seems the author has a good ear for dialogue and the plot while not original was nice. Despite this being a quickie romance, it was somewhat believable that they would be happy together if Kelly doesn’t decide her fate on the horoscope. Also, I was able to believe this despite how their relationship initially started with a one-night stand.

Another negative is the pricing of this novella at $4.98. Ouch. But for me, I would love to see this author promoted more and read more, so I bit the bullet. I plan to buy her back list and read the rest of her books. I really like her voice. Did  I say that already? And plus, since I’m shallow like that, I did buy it since it features a heroine who was an Aquarius like moi.

Anyway, Opposites Attract was unputdownable. My grade, B-.

Technorati Tags: Bonnie Dee, Opposites Attract, Ebooks

Here is the synopsis:

In the fall of 1946, grieving war widow Sarah goes to the carnival with her friends and is riveted by the tattooed man in the freak show, sporting head to toe body art. Later she discovers him hiding in her hayloft, escaped from virtual imprisonment since childhood by the carnival’s evil owner. She shelters him on her farm, fighting a powerful sexual attraction while learning about his mysterious past and gentle nature.

Tom is a sympathetic character. His abuse is written all over his skin; from head to toe. The chemistry between them was never really established for me despite their connection. I kept picturing Tom as this wounded soul who needed some serious therapy. Thus lies one of the biggest problems for me that hindered my total enjoyment of this book.

As I was reading this story, I kinda knew how things would eventually fall into place. The sexual relationship, the towns people and their bigotry and general acceptance of him at the end. I guess my problem is that not all hurts can be healed with love alone. Tom had been abused since he was a child and carnival life was all he knew. So while I did read almost half the story; I read/skim the rest.

I did read Bam’s review (great review that would have sold me too) and it’s interesting how each of us came away from the story and viewed the relationship between Sarah and Tom differently. I did have a problem with Sarah being the protector, the lover, the mother, the teacher. You can’t heal someone completely by giving them shelter and love. It can be the start of the healing process but Tom was just too damaged for me to believe that his life prior to Sarah would be easy to forget and wouldn’t impede on their journey to happiness.

Sarah is self-resilient and self-sufficient. She runs the farm, she changes her own oil, tries to learn how to fix her own plumbing. I liked Sarah. She did come off to me as being a little too needy.  However, Tom was damaged and naive. He could have easily been taken advantaged of but he wasn’t. Here lies another problem in that there wasn’t an even balance to this relationship. Ah, such is life.

Anyway, the writing was fine. Characterization was pretty decent. I did like the author’s style/voice so I wouldn’t mind reading more of her work. However, this book just didn’t work for me. It wasn’t bad or anything. I just couldn’t separate fiction from reality in dealing with this type of story and I don’t like reading about people being ostracized. I can see many readers probably enjoying this story but I can’t recommend it.