Book Review

Come Away With Me By Kristen Proby

DNF

Title: Come Away With Me
Author: Kristen Proby
Publication Info: Kristen Proby Publishing 2012
ISBN: B00A3XVP4E
Genre: New Adult

Book Come Away with Me

I hate DNF’ing a book. My OCD tendencies mean I like to finish everything I start, even if the book is awful. So I think, for me, a DNF grade is actually the worst you can get.

I was still riding the New Adult-normal-girl-dates-celebrity-vibe when I picked up Kristin Proby’s Come Away with Me but literally nothing about this book worked for me. I made it to the midway point, then gave up entirely. 

My chief complaints? The pacing is off, I’m still not sure what the conflict, if there is one, is, the hero is kind of a douche, and the writing just killed it for me.

The book opens with Natalie Conner taking pictures on the beach at dawn. This guy, Luke, who happens to be caught in one of her shots, comes up to her cursing and demanding she give him her camera. Natalie thinks this guy is a nutbag and is all “WTF.” When Luke realizes Natalie wasn’t photographing him, but rather the beach, he’s duly apologetic.

You see Luke is messy-haired, gorgeous star of a series of vampire movies that are super popular and …aw fuck, this is Robert Pattinson fan fic, isn’t it? My context clues tell me it is.

Goddamn it, Twilight.

Look, I wasn’t about to put the book down because the author may have been inspired by R-Patz. Good for her, but in my experience, nothing good has come from Twilight except this blog.

Okay, so the book is told first person POV from Natalie’s point of view (in present tense I might add—another “Oh, fuck”), but I’m able to infer that Luke is surprised Natalie has no idea who he is.  He sees Natalie in town later that day and takes her to lunch and spends the rest of the book relentlessly pursuing her.

This book suffered from Special Snowflake Syndrome. What’s that? It’s when the hero falls in love with the heroine because she’s “not like other girls” but we get no specifics as to what that means. Aside from Luke being physically attracted to Natalie and him liking that she wasn’t after him for his money or fame, there’s no real explanation of why she does it for him. This type of heroine isn’t particularly well-drawn out. She’s a stand in for the reader, hence the first person POV and lack of detail. That doesn’t work for me. I want to read about two fully fleshed characters; I don’t just want a placeholder. Again, I blame Twilight.

Also, I didn’t like Luke. Some of his actions pissed me off and some made me do the head-tilt thing my mom’s dog does when you talk baby talk at him.

Like this line:

“I went home, had breakfast with my roommate, then took a short nap.”

“I would have loved to see that.” His eyes have narrowed, and I feel myself blush.

“Love to see me have breakfast with my roommate?”

“No, smart-ass, loved to see you nap.”

Who wants to watch someone nap? Seriously? It’s boring as shit. Actually, you know who? Edward fucking Cullen. That’s who.

I’m just going to throw this out there. I think if someone really, really wants to watch you sleep, you might need to be worried for your personal safety. Now, I don’t mean if your partner lies in bed next to you and reads or whatever while you’re snoozing.

I mean if he’s like staring intently at you for the entire thirty minutes you’re out. Is he picturing you dead? Worried about apnea? Checking to see if you sleep fart for before proposing marriage?

And in addition to being baffling, Luke is also kind of a dick. He invites Nat over for dinner and when she gets a text-message from her sometimes lover, he becomes a total asshat. Mind you, they’ve known each other for 24 hours:

“Who’s Grant?”

“Just a friend.” I shrug.

He raises an eyebrow. “That wasn’t just a friendly text, Natalie. I am a man. I know the difference.”

I cringe and look back out over the darkening water.

“Look at me.” His voice is sharp, and I whip my eyes back to his.

“He’s just a friend, Luke. Yes, there has been a physical relationship there in the past, but it’s been awhile.”

“How long is awhile?”

“Months.”

“How many months?”

Since Noneofyourfuckingbusiness-ovember, Luke.

Luke and Natalie aren’t dating at this point. They’ve gone out twice. There is no expectation of a relationship. It is none of his business who is texting her and why. Getting possessive over a girl he literally just met and basically assaulted on the beach isn’t sexy. It’s not a sign of how much he loves/wants Natalie. It’s shitty, childish behavior that’s romanticized.

Also, WTF does I am a man. I know the difference mean? Is there some magic power that comes with a Y chromosome that tells dudes what the connotations of a text message are? Is there a text-to-balls correlation that I’m missing? That’s as nonsensical as me saying, “I’m a woman, Natalie. I know that the capital of Mongolia is Ulan Bator.”

So then Natalie and Luke keep dating and she reveals to him her backstory. She’s an orphan (take a drink) and she was raped (take another drink). Were her parents killed in some sort of crash, you ask? Plane crash! Finish your beer!

Also Natalie’s dad was some sort of high profile lawyer, and he sued the parents of her rapist, and she has this large trust fund she never touches because REASONS.

And Natalie never “makes love” to men, she just “fucks” them because of the rape (I guess it’s a control thing? I don’t know). Of course, she makes love to Luke though because despite being raped at a young age and despite there not actually being anything to support why this is true, Luke is different.

I’m assuming his penis sparkles, but it’s never explicitly stated.

About a third of the way into the book Natalie learns who Luke is and feels betrayed that he never revealed his true identity. She’s humiliated.

Book Gorilla Crazy Glue Luke stays in character, acting like a douche bag, but passing it off as “I ACT THIS WAY BECAUSE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.”

“Natalie, so help me God, if you don’t open this door, I’ll break it down. Come out here and look at me.” His voice sounds ragged and close to mine. And he’s really pissed. But so am I! I don’t respond, and suddenly Luke hits the wall to the left of the door. “OPEN THE MOTHERFUCKING DOOR!”

This behavior is quite frankly scary. It sealed my dislike of Luke with Super-glue.

Of course Luke and Natalie make up. After that there were just a bunch of chapters where they date and have sex a lot and nothing happens. Oh, except Natalie goes to Luke’s family’s house for dinner, and his sister is shitty to her because she thinks Natalie might be a gold-digger, and Natalie puts her down and Luke’s ENTIRE FAMILY SIDES WITH THE WOMAN THEY JUST MET RATHER THAN HIS SISTER.

It was like, “You are excused from this family, sister. We no longer love you because Luke has a stand-in-for-the-reader girlfriend and we now love her more than you. We’re going to adopt her and give her your room and buy her that pony you always wanted. Please enjoy this Greyhound Bus ticket to the new life you’ll have to start.”

After Natalie and Luke’s blow-out regarding his sekrit identity, I couldn’t figure out what the conflict was. I made it through like five chapters where nothing except sex and dating happened and then I was out. I’m assuming whatever the final conflict was it will involve Luke acting like a mega-dick (which is like a mega-shark only made out of dick) and Natalie being perfect in every way.

Right now this book is free so if you want to try it, go crazy. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.


This book is available (and currently free) at Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Kobo

Add Your Comment

Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

*


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

↑ Back to Top