Tag: Lisa Becker

Review: Links by Lisa Becker

Posted August 28, 2017 by Rowena in Reviews | 1 Comment

Review: Links by Lisa BeckerReviewer: Rowena
Links by Lisa Becker
Publisher: Desert Breeze Publishing
Publication Date: August 1st 2017
Genres: Contemporary Romance
Pages: 197
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three-stars

Charlotte Windham, a nerdy high school prodigy who tutored classmates to earn money for college, escapes her geeky past to become a celebrated novelist. During a chance encounter at a Los Angeles restaurant 15 years after high school, she reconnects with her secret crush, Garrett Stephens, the popular star athlete and teen heart breaker. Garrett, still leaving broken hearts in his wake, is now a successful professional golfer who recently suffered a possible career-ending shoulder injury. As he and Charlotte spend time together, developing a friendship based on mutual respect and comfortable companionship, can Charlotte forgive the past and can Garrett reform his lothario ways for a chance at love?

Links is the third book by Lisa Becker that I read and it’s a book that follows a professional golfer as he finds love in a blast from the past. The blast in the past comes in the form of his former English tutor from high school. They run into each other years later and Garrett (the pro golfer) is intrigued by the woman that Charlotte (blast from the past) has grown up to be.

Charlotte was a scholarship kid at the private school that she attended with Garrett Stephens. Her Mom was a single Mom who did her best to get Charlotte the best education she could and Charlotte worked as a tutor to help pay her own way once high school was over and done with. They both had plans that took them in different directions and even though Charlotte harbored a fierce crush on Garrett, the crush was not returned because she was a nerd with braces and big glasses and Garrett was popular and going out with other popular girls.

If there is anything that I can sympathize with, it’s unrequited crushes so in the beginning, I had a lot of sympathy for Charlotte. She was head over heels in love with Garrett and she did not make it onto his radar..at all. So when they run into each other years and years later and Garrett is a lot different from the Garrett she knew in the past, things should have gotten interesting. They did get interesting but they also got a bit frustrating as well.

Garrett Stephens was my favorite character in this book. He was very aware of the fact that he was a teenage dickhead but he was also very sure that those days were behind him. Sure, he’s never been in a serious relationship before but he wasn’t a cheater and he wasn’t hurting anyone so in my eyes, there was nothing wrong with that. He wasn’t promising women that he’ll make an honest woman out of them and then not following through on those promises. He was having adult relations with like minded women and he could do that because he was an adult. I’ll get back to why I bring this up a little later in this review so stay tuned…

Charlotte had the potential of being my favorite character in this book. She was a book loving nerd (like me) who wrote books for a living and she was sweet natured and humble. She loved her mother and took care of her and was a great support to her friends and loved ones. Sounds like an awesome character, right? Sounds like someone you’d want to be like, right? Well, as great as Charlotte was, I struggled with her character throughout much of the book. First off, she giggled way too much for someone who was not 14 anymore. Every time she giggled, I wanted to pull her hair. She giggled in every single page, it seemed like and after the third time of her giggling in Garrett’s presence, I was over it. The other thing is how she spent a huge chunk of the book trying to prove to herself and to Garrett that she wasn’t the same nerd girl from their past. She wanted him to see her as the woman she is now and yet she didn’t give that same respect to Garrett and that bugged the hell out of me. When Garrett finally confronts her about that, she apologizes and then in the next breath, her jealousy gets the best of her and she pushes Garrett away…again.

I like for characters in the books that I’m reading to be flawed and I don’t mind if they have stupid moments but more often than not, in this book, I thought Charlotte was being stupid. I just couldn’t understand or connect with her issues and I guess I wanted her to be stronger than she showed she was in this book and in the end, I was frustrated with Garrett for not making her grovel some more for assuming the worst in him without a conversation. She knew what she saw (she didn’t see shit) and didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t do anything to deserve her doubt and that was what I struggled with throughout the entire book.

Overall, this book was cute and a fast read but I struggled with the heroine’s thought processes and her actions from beginning to end and that affected my enjoyment of the book. I enjoyed Garrett, his siblings and the romance was fun when I wasn’t annoyed with Charlotte but still, it was an enjoyable read.

Grade: 3 out of 5

three-stars

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Review: Double Click by Lisa Becker.

Posted September 4, 2013 by Rowena in Reviews | 1 Comment

Double Click- Lisa Becker
Rowena’s review of Double Click by Lisa Becker.

Fans of the romantic hit Click: An Online Love Story will enjoy another voyeuristic dive into the lives of Renee, Shelley, Ashley, Mark and Ethan, as Double Click picks up with their lives six months later. Are Renee and Ethan soul mates? Does Mark ever go on a date? Has Shelley run out of sexual conquests in Los Angeles? Will Ashley’s judgmental nature sabotage her budding relationship? Through a marriage proposal, wedding, new baby and unexpected love twist, Double Click answers these questions and more. Readers will continue to cheer, laugh, cry and cringe following the email exploits of Renee and friends.

Double Click is the follow-up book to Click and it had been so long since I read the first book that reading this book was almost like being introduced to these characters all over again. I’d forgotten so much but after a few chapters, my memory of these characters came back and the emails were back to making me laugh. These characters remind me so much of my own circle of friends and the emails that we go through each and every single day.

Renee, Shelley and Ashley are like the main besties of the group.  They really do remind me of my friends and our emails throughout the work day.  The emails are constant and often hilarious that I find myself straining not to laugh out loud when I’m sitting at my desk.

In this book, Renee and Ethan are together and they’re happy.  Shelley is single and Ashley just had a baby and…even Mark has someone.  Mark brings his new girlfriend around and the girls are not fans of her.  She’s too much to take and Shelley outright hates her which makes Renee think that Shelley has feelings for Mark (so not the case) but Renee is determined to get along with Mark’s girlfriend…for Mark.  And she wants everyone else to give her another shot so a good chunk of the book is spent trying to get along with Mark’s sweetie.

As fun as this book was, there were times when the story dragged.  There were times when I found myself dazing off with the book open and just thinking about other things.  I liked the book but it wasn’t my favorite.  I liked the first book better. Though I will say that it was good to see the gang again, when the story ended I wasn’t sad or mad about it.  I thought everything came full circle and it was a fitting ending.  Everyone is happy and moving on with their lives. Which was good.  So while this book wasn’t the best thing that I’ve read, it was still a solid read.

Grade: 3 out of 5

The book is available from Lisa Becker.  You can purchase it here or here.  This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: Click: An Online Love Story by Lisa Becker.

Posted August 11, 2011 by Rowena in Giveaways, Reviews | 8 Comments



Rowena’s review of Click: An Online Love Story by Lisa Becker.


Fast approaching her 30th birthday and finding herself not married, not dating, and without even a prospect or a house full of cats, Renee Greene, the heroine of Click: An Online Love Story, reluctantly joins her best guy pal on a journey to find love online in Los Angeles.

The story unfolds through a series of emails between Renee and her best friends (anal-compulsive Mark, the overly-judgmental Ashley and the over-sexed Shelley) as well as the gentlemen suitors she meets online. From the guy who starts every story with “My buddies and I were out drinking one night,” to the egotistical “B” celebrity looking for someone to stroke his ego, Renee endures her share of hilarious and heinous cyber dates. Fraught with BCC’s, FWD’s and inadvertent Reply to All’s, readers will root for Renee to “click” with the right man.

There haven’t been too many stories told through e-mail that I haven’t enjoyed and this book was no exception. Click: An Online Love Story follows Renee Greene as she braves the world of online dating and lives to tell all about it to her friends through emails. Renee’s friend Mark has talked her into doing the whole online dating thing and when Renee starts everything up, she really starts everything up. Almost immediately, she’s got emails coming in and she’s going on dates and most all of her dates are bad. Then they’re not bad and they’re good but over the course of a few weeks, they turn bad.

Renee reminds me of all of the single women out there trying to find their Mr. Right. She’s cute, she’s funny and she had a great support system in her friends Shelley, Ashley and Mark. Women in their twenties and thirties will connect with Renee because who hasn’t gone on a bad date? Who hasn’t thought they found the one and found out they were wrong and cried to their friends all about it through emails? I know I have and that’s why I enjoyed this book so much because Renee could have been me. I related to each one of her bad dates and I laughed right along with her friends when Renee emailed about each of dates.

Her friends round out what made this book such an entertaining tale. Shelley and her inappropriate comments, Mark and his anal-compulsiveness and Ashley with her judgmental ways. They all brought something different to this circle of friends and they each had me laughing, rolling my eyes down the street or just smiling throughout the entire book. I adored Shelley even though I couldn’t believe how many different guys she did the deed with in a month. She was always with someone new but she owned it all, she didn’t pretend that she wasn’t who she really was and I think of all of Renee’s friends, Shelley was my favorite. It was hard for me to like Ashley because 1) she got on my nerves with the hot and cold relationship she had with Evan and 2) she was so judgmental. Mark made me laugh because it took him forever and a day to get his online dating profile up and the reasons he found for each and every date that he broke was another thing that had me laughing.

This book is short but it’s sweet and I think fans of chick lit and contemporary romance will enjoy this. Especially if you’ve read and enjoyed The Boy Next Door by Meg Cabot and Holly’s Inbox by Holly Denham. I definitely recommend this book.

GIVEAWAY ALERT: Lisa Becker has graciously agreed to give away a free e-copy of this book to a lucky commenter. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post and tell us a brief story of an online dating disaster, if you don’t have one then share with us how often you email your friends during the day. Good luck!

This book is available from Lisa Becker. You can buy it here and here in e-format.

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