Surviving in Everton by Scarlett PhilipsMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
A Bit Long Winded
This is the second book in a duet and you need to read the first book to make sense of this one.
I re-read the first book in this duet before reading this recently released second book and I had forgotten that a lot of the information that I had guessed hadn’t actually been revealed in that book. It was a surprise to me that things I was so sure of in my memory as fact were actually just supposition on my part. I think this tells you how glaring the signposts were on the plot setups in the first book.
As I was absolutely sure about the ‘whodunnit’ aspects of this book, there weren’t any surprises whatsoever. This isn’t always a problem for me if the characters are written with depth and the world-building is solid. Sadly I didn’t feel that these quite made up for the predictable plot. There is nothing really wrong with this book, but it definitely felt like it was a bit long-winded for my liking. There were lots of sex scenes but none of them were particularly smoking hot and it felt like they were run through the numbers. I think I would have preferred the author made the scenes either shorter or much fewer in number. I actually found myself skipping pages through those scenes, which isn’t really like me.
I think if the author had taken all those many pages of formulaic sex and written more backstory for the characters I would have enjoyed this book much more. There are a lot of characters in this book and the men in particular only seemed important in how they related to Rowen and her daughter Violet. They didn’t really seem to have any life apart from their current relationship with her. There is very little talk of ex-girlfriends or much about their jobs, except how it intersects with Rowen. There is no real discussion about their past friendship with Rowen before she went to university except in passing and I think this was a mistake. Having more of the past relationship would have made the current relationship sweeter.
There are some really sweet moments in this book, so I don’t want to imply there is nothing good in it. There are plenty of lovely parts, especially the relationship between the two kids and also how the adults relate to them. If you enjoy reading about relationships between single parents you will definitely enjoy these parts of the books.
I’m pretty sure I won’t be continuing with this series because I don’t think this author’s style is for me. I may revisit that in a few more books time, but until she’s got a more ruthless editor I’m going to steer clear.
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