The Book Gourmet

Nick Ransome hates Julia Holcomb's family and is about to ruin their business. He's gonna relish that accomplishment, but he's just thought of an additional bonus to his plan. He'll seduce Julia Holcomb to make his revenge even sweeter.

This book was 184 pages too long.

In a reading-challenge group I've encountered an interesting post about how many pages you have to read before you can officially abandon a horrible book. Apparently all it takes is some simple math. 100 - your age = pages needed before being able to discard a book as DNF. In my instance it would take me 74 pages, but with this beauty (notice the sarcasm) all it took was the first five.

The writing was highschool essay-writing 101, the characters more like cardboard cutouts, the pacing dragged, and the theme was so clichéd it made my teeth hurt. I know, I know, I should've been prepared to judge from the title and the blurb, but sometimes these been-there-read-that revenge plots can be rather pleasurable to read combined with likable and interesting characters and great writing (take Tessa Radley's Rich Man's Revenge for example).

Well, this wasn't one of those. I've never been more thankful for the DELETE button.