Always Something There to Remind Me by Beth Harbison

Gut Instinct Rating - 3

Story Line - 5

Writing Style - 3

Characters - 3

Excitement Factor - 2

Believability for type and topics - 3

Similarity to other books - 4

Cover art - 3

Title Relevance - 2

Goodreads users gave this book a 3.72. I think it was more deserving of a 3.11.

Emoji Meter: 😍 🙄 😴

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Published in 2011.

Pages: 358.

Number of books by author: 20.

Genre: Chick-Lit.

Now, maybe the $1 sticker from the Barnes & Noble bins led me down a horrible path. I thought, I bet I'm going to love this chick-lit crap. I was proven wrong. I didn't like this book at all. I'm not sure if it was the chick-lit itself, or if it was the author. But instinctively, I wouldn't recommend this book. Gut instinct tells me that this book could've been way better, and I could've hated it way less. But that's just not what happened. The characters were really horrible. Amy & Cam, the two daughters "featured" as secondary characters were so incredibly stereotypical that I could've vomited. That brings me to Rick - the perfect step-father/boyfriend. However, the 1-year-anniversary predictability was disturbing. Now, let's move to Nate. I hated him almost as much as I hated Erin, except he wasn't so annoying. Erin was the biggest cry-baby I've ever encountered in a book. Romance or not, she was annoying. Pity my life. Pity my self. Pity everything about me. If you like really cheesy chick-flicks/lits with completely boring characters who are more predictable than a coin flip, this is for you. Seriously. Enjoy it. (Hell, I'll even send you the book for the cost of shipping!) But I'm not into whine-y characters who are stereotyped to the core of white people in addition to their predictable nature.

The book wasn't even that believable, unless you're into unrealistic romance novels. Picture, Hallmark Channel and Lifetime having a baby. It was similar, but it was unique enough that it wasn't like every other book out there. The writing style was annoying. (Yeah, I was really annoyed throughout this whole book, but I figured it'd have a better ending.) Virtually every other chapter was a flashback, and I'm not really into the flashback-alternating-with-present-day. For one, it's predictable (yes, again, the word appears), but it's just annoying. If someone is living 20+ years in the past, and remembering it out of the blue, I'd say maybe there's a little too much of a pity party in someone's life. All of the above is probably what made the book so boring. There's no way I could've read this in one sitting if I wanted to. It was just really boring with very little shock-factor. The story line, however, didn't suck entirely. This could've been a really good book with this story line, but again - predictability, lack of believability, and annoying characters made this a poor read. The title was kind of strange, and every time I saw it, I started singing (I bet you did it... didn't you? You did. I know you did) the annoying jazz-fingers song. I really thought the title was intended to be something powerful, but for fuck's sake, it was so unrelated. There's a million other things this could've been titled. The cover art wasn't even inventive. This book was just another crappy read in a slow month of reading.