~Audiobook~ Where There’s Smoke by Kathy Coopmans

The Synopsis:

The past six years of my life have been consumed by guilt. Since we lost Landon to a fire, I’ve done everything in my power to protect my daughter, Leila, from finding out the truth about how her twin brother died. Nothing in my life means more to me than her.
Not my band, not my reputation. Nothing.
Until I see Tatum, the woman I saved on the beach the same night she dealt with a loss of her own.
~
The daily routine I’ve settled into is what keeps me going. Work at my chocolate shop, pay the bills, repeat. I don’t date. I don’t trust. And I have never forgotten the man who walked away from saving my life without allowing me to thank him.
I know how to reach him, but I avoid him at all costs.
Until fate decides to make another appearance.

I received this book from the author/publisher via AudioBookWorm for the purpose of this review. All comments and opinions are entirely my own.

Review:

The premise of this book was quite enticing to me. A drummer and a chocolatier, both with broken pasts, destined by fate to meet…again. I also sensed the promise of mystery, some suspense, and even “family moments” between the father and his daughter.

But I was completely disappointed. Appalled even.

For the entire first 3 chapters, the characters hit me as “woe-is-me”. I completely understand illustrating their brokenness, and I also completely understand that both had gone through tremendous heartache, but saying the same thing in different ways for several, long, chapters was just too much. At first, I was quite taken with the author’s choice of describing their pain. The story told in first person, and the use of analogies and eloquent speech captured me immediately. But as the chapters went on, the sentences and thoughts became the same and I found myself bored with the story, ready for a subject change that never came.

On top of this, the cursing was overwhelming. The “F” word was used most commonly by our male main character in just about every sentence, and don’t forget, the book is told in first person. Most of the time, cursing doesn’t bother me, but surely this much cursing isn’t needed to write a compelling story. It left almost no room for creative writing.

I had expected sexual content as well, so I’m here to say that I wasn’t wrong…though my expectations were blown completely out of the water. I bailed on the book once “adult toys” were brought into the plot.

Needless to say, with the plot being as slow as it was, the characters as boring as they were, and the content that was all present in just the first 3 chapters, this book is most definitely only going to receive 1 out of 5 stars from me and advise against reading it unless this sort of book suits your tastes.