Our Stop by Laura Jane Williams

          3.5 Stars

This was a fun enough read, it just didn't really grab me and absorb me in Daniel and Nadia's story.  There were too many coincidences and near misses and a few plot holes that irritated me.  That said I did read the book in a day - the joy's of a day off work with nothing to do but read!

Two things really bugged me about the story.  The first was Nadia's job.  She is clearly in a corporate world (designing artifical intelligence programs) and yet her persistent lateness doesn't seem to be a cause for concern to her employers.  She just works through her lunch hour to make the time up.  Nowhere I have ever worked has had such a lax attitude to timekeeping and it began to really irritate me.  In fact her persistent lateness was a bit of a running joke through the story, sorry but lateness is just rudeness when it happens all the time.  The second point of contention I had was Nadia's complete inability to see what was clearly happening between Elle and Gaby; how can one person be so dense and self-absorbed.

The story arc is paced well and it was really good to have the male and female viewpoints of the situation.  It especially helped that Daniel and Nadia were clearly very distinct characters and the author managed to give them each an individual voice.  I was less impressed by the "grand passion" and the unrealistic expectations of meeting "the one", but that is personal cynicism so I'll let it slide.

I did enjoy the to and fro in the Missed Connections column.  It was also refreshing to see both characters agonising over what to write and whether they were communicating with the intended person or not.  They are both adults but are kind of struggling with adulting and that is something we can all identify with - I gave up the struggle years ago and decided to remain immature for ever.

I did find myself less interested in whether or not they would ever actually get to have that first date or not as in the development of their characters over the piece.  Daniel's relationships with Lorenzo (his skeevy flatmate) and Romeo (the security guard) were particularly well executed.  I also appreciated the way his grief at the loss of his father was handled - especially his concern over his mother's behaviour in the months following his death.

Nadia I found less interesting, for some reason she came across as pretty annoying.  I already mentioned the persistent inability to keep track of time but she also comes across as quite needy and some of her decisions made me wonder if she was actually all there.  I get the insecurities about appearance, personality and being left "on the shelf" but Nadia does seem awfully ready to settle.  Whilst I agree with her that a Nora Ephron film is a thing of great beauty (particularly You've Got Mail) they are not indicative of real life but Nadia seems to think they are somehow gospel.

Generally a fun read with a great deal of warmth, just not entirely for me.

THIS IS AN HONEST REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED FROM READERS FIRST