Eight Goodbyes - Christine Brae

Summary: “One universe, nine planets, 204 countries, 809 islands and 7 seas. And I had the privilege of meeting you.” - Unknown

When Tessa Talman meets Simon Fremont for the first time, not only is she attracted to him, she’s intrigued by how different their lives are. He’s a dedicated scientist, practical, pragmatic, and grounded—while she’s a head-in-the-clouds romance author. As their relationship grows, they agree to meet in places around the world, while continuing to live on opposite sides of the globe.

Though their feelings for each other deepen, their priorities remain the same. Simon is in a hurry to be financially sound and settle down, but Tessa is enjoying her freedom and newfound success. Neither is willing to give in, but as each goodbye gets harder, Tessa begins to wonder whether fame is the path to happiness, or if she has everything she needs in Simon.

Just as Tessa finds the courage to go after her own happily ever after, the unthinkable happens, separating them in ways they never imagined.

To move forward, she must let go of the past, and determine once and for all if love is truly more powerful than the pain of goodbye. (Summary and pic from goodreads.com)

I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

My Review: You guyyzzzz. Okay. I guess I should preface this by saying that I am not a romance novel reader. Like, not. At. All. It’s not my jam. I don’t like unrealistic situations or people that are so beautiful and so perfect that they’re unrealistic. I don’t read a lot of romance novels, so I’m generalizing here, but I’m thinking that this is pretty standard in a lot of them.

When I took a copy of this book, I didn’t realize it was a romance novel. I mean, I guess I should have? However, it became very obviously very quickly that it was. This ensured much eye rolling from me. But, like I said, because I am by no means a romance novel aficionado, maybe some of these things are not typical and this book just happened to be seriously cliché.

First off, the characters were perfect. They were beautiful and talented and smart and all the things everyone in the land wants to be. The dude has an accent, which seems to be the key to all hot guys in all the novels, and the girl is kinda kooky with her own brand of coolness that no one else can be and yet she’s afraid to settle down cause…that’s just not what girls like this do. They’re both wildly successful and very young, which is great because it’s hard to be the star of your own romance novel if you’re just kind of a loser or middle of the road Joe who doesn’t have much going on.

Secondly, the story was just so far-fetched. It must be nice to be able to just jet set everywhere since they’re both not only wealthy but also very successful so they can do whatever they like. The female lead is a famous author to the point that even J.K. Rowling would be jealous, which is great considering she’s written one romance novel that is apparently so mainstream that random people come up to here everywhere in the world knowing who she is and clamoring for her autograph.

This book did take a little bit of a turn, which was not surprising, but it did add some extra chapters to the book. And here’s another beef I have about it—it was counting down the “goodbyes” (hence the name of the book) and then all of a sudden it stopped doing that and the chapters changed their method of counting down the goodbyes and randomly went elsewhere. I do not like that. At all. If you want to organize a book a certain way, then you should stay with that organization. Naming each chapter a numbered goodbye made sense, but after it stopped (it didn’t make it to eight) it just became confusing and then never picked up the counting the goodbyes again. That bugs.

So many of the situations—the love scenes, the meetings, the utter jealousy and ridiculousness of it all were just too much for me to handle. My husband pretty much laughed at me the whole time I read this book. It was just so romance novel.

Now. I know that this author has quite a following with her other books. She does not need a reviewer like me to okay her book because everyone that is going to buy it has either bought it or will buy it anyway. If you like romance novels, you will probably love this book because as I mentioned above, it’s romance novel gold. That being said, it really wasn’t my cup of tea and as a non-romance novel reader I just can’t. Even.

My Rating: 2 stars (because I’m generous and realize that just because it’s not my thing doesn’t mean it’s not someone else’s thing)

For the sensitive reader: There is language and sex in this book. Lots of sex. Romance novel sex. If you are looking for a clean book, I would move along.