Monday, February 2, 2015

Neanderthal Seeks Human: A Smart Romance (Knitting in the City #1) by Penny Reid

I wanted to love this book, I even expected to! It sounded as my cup of tea as I started reading it. A strange kinda gal, not especially good looking (or rather not your typical beauty), smart in an unconventional kind of way, the kind who attracts too much attention to her strangeness and embarrass herself when she is trying her best not to. This sounds so ME on so many levels! It should ABSOLUTELY be my "thing", yet I was annoyed and bored out of my mind I couldn't be bothered to listen to Jaine's inner voice. 

Sadly, this is a DNF at 13%. Usually I give a quarter of a book a chance before I give it up, but here since the main character won't change there is no use in waiting for the plot to save me as Jaine seems to be the sole POV in this one so no matter what happens I am stuck with her anyway... 

I can't really tell you what it is about since it's basically what you can read on the synopsis - Jaine is having the worst day ever - breaking up with her boyfriend and losing her job being the major points yet there is one bright spot - Quinn Sullivan - the HOT security guy who escorts her out of the building she used to work in. Later on they meet again in a very strange looking club. This is where I stopped. They suppose to meet quite a lot of times or him being in the wrong or rather right place in the wrong time yet the right time. Somehow being there for her. 

This book IS funny in a very geeky kind of way, yet I can't really "get" the main character, her detachment from the world around her, and especially emotional detachment baffles me. I don't understand how a person with so much regressed emotion or someone who can't handle emotion at all is taught by a psychologist to put the emotions aside. I'm no psychologist myself, buy I DID study the basics and this just makes NO SENSE AT ALL. It also makes Jaine more of a robot than a real person. I have no problems with analytic people, but she is totally devoid of anything HUMAN! Well, besides embarrassing herself which is something you WOULD expect from an alien who doesn't really understand human behavior which is EXACTLY how Jaine feel. 
While she might be on the autistic scale I have a strong feeling that's NOT what the author was after. If it WAS the idea behind the book it would have been portrayed differently I'm sure! (and if so I have a strong feeling I would have loved it and appreciate the subject being  brought into contemporary romance) Yet what we did get is a person who is incapable of dealing with emotions and HIGHLY lacking in social skills and THIS is the person who tells the story. A woman who is after facts of life and not living it.

As you can guess I won't be continuing to read this series. Right to this point there are 4 full novels and one "in  between" novel but there is at least one more planned. 

 (DNF 13%)


Additional Details: Kindle Ebook, 394 pages, 1 February 2015 / On GoodReads

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