Well, crud! No one's more surprised than me, but Second First Impressions isn't what I wanted at all.
At first glance, this seems like your typical cute romcom. Ruthie works at a retirement home and doesn't have much of a life outside of work. Then the owner's son, Teddy, shows up, and turns her world upside down through a combination of wit and looks. And she realizes that maybe she's ready for love after all. What's not to like, right? Well, a lot, as it turns out.
You guys know that I adore strong and spunky female characters. Unfortunately, Ruthie isn't that. She's more like the extreme opposite, as in the blandest wallflower ever. She's so easily spooked that she's afraid to leave the grounds of her workplace. She dresses like an old lady, then gets hurt when people point that out. She needs to be constantly reassured that she has value, which every person around her does for her.
As for Teddy, he is a huge guy covered in tattoos and has beautiful, luxurious, long hair, which we are told constantly as Ruthie daydreams about freeing it from its elastic, running her hands through it, and tugging on it. I don't have a problem with any of those, but it's so specific, you know? It feels like it appeals to a very particular taste, and it's not mine. I kept imagining Teddy as a tatted up Fabio, and it didn't do it for me.
On top of that, I didn't feel even the tiniest of sparks between our two main characters. I don't understand what they see in each other other than looks. Ruthie is such a bland non-person, and Teddy just whines about how much he needs someone to take care of him. Whenever they flirted with each other, it's so jarring and sleazy that I felt creeped out. At one point, Ruthie says no to lunch, so Teddy just picks her up and carries her out to the car.
Speaking of being creeped out, I was expecting adorable old people in a retirement home. But the old people in here are strange and inappropriate. Two of the old ladies wanted to hire a young hot guy to be their assistant. They would make him cut a Big Mac into bite-size pieces and feed it to them, bury and dig up clothing, sleep in crawlspaces, and wear stripper outfits that say "Hot Stuff" on it. Am I crazy for not finding that to be funny and cute?
But that's not the biggest problem. (There's more, you say?) My biggest issue is that I couldn't follow the writing. A lot of it is in dialogue form, but what each person says doesn't make sense from the previous line. Or what they do in one paragraph doesn't make sense from the previous one. I kept going back and rereading pages to try to make sense of what I've missed, but I can't find the cues to help me understand. It feels so random and nonsensical.
Perhaps you're still undecided if you should read this book, so I've devised a litmus test:
His wallet is a squashed leather medieval relic, run over by horse and cart a thousand times. I want to open it and read every single card and receipt. I want to sleep with it under my pillow.
If you can relate to that, then this book is for you. On the other hand, if you've never wanted to sleep with your beloved's wallet, then perhaps it is a good idea to stay away.
Readaroo Rating: 1 star
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