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A review by whatbritreads
The Stopover by TL Swan
2.0
*Thank you to Amazon Publishing for sending me a copy of this book to review!*
I’m gutted about this book. I was intrigued by the synopsis and people I knew were raving about it, but for me, this just fell so flat. I didn’t like it and I don’t think it was very well executed.
I should have known this would be a shaky one when the love interest is introduced to us as Jim, that was a name ick. It got slightly better over time in that he was also called Jay and Jameson every so often, but that also irritated me because why were we rotating between three different names for a single character?!
I can deal with cheese and unrealistic books, but this one just had me cringing throughout. The dialogue, the behaviour of the characters, the questionable descriptions - I just really struggled to see this through. The writing felt very unpolished and it was written in a way that felt like something fresh from Wattpad. By this I mean it felt like the author was writing chapter after chapter randomly, not knowing where the story was going to go and not really acknowledging the previous chapters. It felt all over the place and random, with no flow whatsoever. This style of approaching the storytelling also made it drag out for hundreds of pages more than was necessary. It made for a very bland, very repetitive read. The book was also full of typos.
It employed a dual pov style of storytelling which didn’t add anything at all and just felt a bit of a nuisance. You’d get into the swing of a chapter and it would randomly go back and forth between them both. It was irritating. And frankly, I did not care what Jameson had to say.
Jameson himself was a very creepy love interest. From CCTV surveillance while she’s at work, to controlling who she speaks to, and borderline-stalking - I wasn’t feeling it. From the moment they first met on the plane and he started immediately sexualising her I was grossed out. I also found him to be a gigantic, snobbish, whiny baby of a man. There is one chapter in this where Emily tries to do something nice and romantic for them both and he spends the entire time moaning. No thanking her for the effort, or even trying to have a nice time. He was a massive baby, and his rudeness was just cruel. I was so angry reading it.
It wasn’t just Jameson that annoyed me, Emily herself was a poorly written and irritating heroine. If I had to read her saying ‘magical dick’ unironically one more time I was going to scoop my eyeballs out. She also spent a massive portion of the book slut-shaming for no real reason. You’d think these characters would be less childish at their big age. There is literally one point in here where Emily is having a gigantic hysterical breakdown and as some sort of a bit of wisdom she quotes Magic Mike XXL. Unironically. I literally could have screamed. There is also a scene in which she gets roses and decides to rip them to shreds and apparently ‘jump up and down’ on them while screaming in rage. It was just embarrassing to read this book.
Once they were established and his weird behaviour was more reciprocated, the spicy scenes were pretty good, but in my opinion not good enough to resurrect this book completely. For my taste, there were also far too many of them. Jameson and Emily had no connection except physically, they did nothing in this book but sleep together and their relationship was built on a very fragile foundation. It made the eventual over-the-top declaration of love a snoozefest, wholly unbelievable. They were both insane. If you like that in your books, you will love this but it wasn’t for me. They both felt so two-dimensional. Apparently, all Jameson did was work, and all Emily did was talk to Jameson. Who was she outside of her connection to him? She had no life, no other friends, no family, and no hobbies. She was a cardboard cutout of a person. Their back and forth gave me whiplash.
The most random, poorly-written turn of events I’ve ever come across. Boring, repetitive, and far too dragged out. If you like toxic relationships and don’t care too much about how a book is written and don’t mind shallow, slightly bizarre characters go for it. But I found it terrible.
I’m gutted about this book. I was intrigued by the synopsis and people I knew were raving about it, but for me, this just fell so flat. I didn’t like it and I don’t think it was very well executed.
I should have known this would be a shaky one when the love interest is introduced to us as Jim, that was a name ick. It got slightly better over time in that he was also called Jay and Jameson every so often, but that also irritated me because why were we rotating between three different names for a single character?!
I can deal with cheese and unrealistic books, but this one just had me cringing throughout. The dialogue, the behaviour of the characters, the questionable descriptions - I just really struggled to see this through. The writing felt very unpolished and it was written in a way that felt like something fresh from Wattpad. By this I mean it felt like the author was writing chapter after chapter randomly, not knowing where the story was going to go and not really acknowledging the previous chapters. It felt all over the place and random, with no flow whatsoever. This style of approaching the storytelling also made it drag out for hundreds of pages more than was necessary. It made for a very bland, very repetitive read. The book was also full of typos.
It employed a dual pov style of storytelling which didn’t add anything at all and just felt a bit of a nuisance. You’d get into the swing of a chapter and it would randomly go back and forth between them both. It was irritating. And frankly, I did not care what Jameson had to say.
Jameson himself was a very creepy love interest. From CCTV surveillance while she’s at work, to controlling who she speaks to, and borderline-stalking - I wasn’t feeling it. From the moment they first met on the plane and he started immediately sexualising her I was grossed out. I also found him to be a gigantic, snobbish, whiny baby of a man. There is one chapter in this where Emily tries to do something nice and romantic for them both and he spends the entire time moaning. No thanking her for the effort, or even trying to have a nice time. He was a massive baby, and his rudeness was just cruel. I was so angry reading it.
It wasn’t just Jameson that annoyed me, Emily herself was a poorly written and irritating heroine. If I had to read her saying ‘magical dick’ unironically one more time I was going to scoop my eyeballs out. She also spent a massive portion of the book slut-shaming for no real reason. You’d think these characters would be less childish at their big age. There is literally one point in here where Emily is having a gigantic hysterical breakdown and as some sort of a bit of wisdom she quotes Magic Mike XXL. Unironically. I literally could have screamed. There is also a scene in which she gets roses and decides to rip them to shreds and apparently ‘jump up and down’ on them while screaming in rage. It was just embarrassing to read this book.
Once they were established and his weird behaviour was more reciprocated, the spicy scenes were pretty good, but in my opinion not good enough to resurrect this book completely. For my taste, there were also far too many of them. Jameson and Emily had no connection except physically, they did nothing in this book but sleep together and their relationship was built on a very fragile foundation. It made the eventual over-the-top declaration of love a snoozefest, wholly unbelievable. They were both insane. If you like that in your books, you will love this but it wasn’t for me. They both felt so two-dimensional. Apparently, all Jameson did was work, and all Emily did was talk to Jameson. Who was she outside of her connection to him? She had no life, no other friends, no family, and no hobbies. She was a cardboard cutout of a person. Their back and forth gave me whiplash.
The most random, poorly-written turn of events I’ve ever come across. Boring, repetitive, and far too dragged out. If you like toxic relationships and don’t care too much about how a book is written and don’t mind shallow, slightly bizarre characters go for it. But I found it terrible.