Lick, by Kylie Scott

TITLE: Lick
AUTHOR: Kylie Scott

COPYRIGHT: 2013
PAGES: 286
PUBLISHER: Momentum

SETTING: Contemporary
TYPE: New Adult Romance
SERIES: 1st in the Stage Dive series

Waking up in Vegas was never meant to be like this.

Evelyn Thomas's plans for celebrating her twenty-first birthday in Las Vegas were big. Huge. But she sure as hell never meant to wake up on the bathroom floor with a hangover to rival the black plague, a very attractive half-naked tattooed man, and a diamond on her finger large enough to scare King Kong. Now if she could just remember how it all happened.

One thing is for certain, being married to rock and roll's favourite son is sure to be a wild ride.

Evelyn Thomas is in Las Vegas with her friends, celebrating her 21st birthday. She's planning to have fun, but she's not usually a big drinker, so she involuntarily overdoes it. She wakes up the next morning to discover that, sometime the previous night, she got married to the long-haired, tattooed and very good-looking man who's currently sharing a room with her.

Turns out the man's none other than famous rock star David Ferris, and he's mortally offended that she doesn't remember anything that happened the previous night, a night that was clearly very special to him. Their plans for a quickie, secret annulment are shot when the press find out about their wedding, and this throws them together for a little while. And as they spend time with each other, Ev begins to think being married to David might not be such a bad thing.

Yep, I suspected it. I've just gone to goodreads and indeed, there are loads of gif reviews. I think it was LizMc who mentioned it first, and she's right: when a book has lots of gif reviews, it's a sure sign it won't be my thing. And this wasn't.

I actually quite liked the beginning of it, the set-up of the romance. I liked the idea of two people having such a strong instant connection that marriage seems like a good idea, but then the next morning, one remembers that connection and the other doesn't. And yet they're married. It's sort of like one in the couple is in a love match and the other in a marriage of convenience, and it could have been quite interesting to explore.

The problem is that while this was the setup, it wasn't what the book was about. The book was about "OMG, I'm married to a stinking-rich, hugely famous and sexy rock god every woman in the world wants!". My theory is that there's two different raison d'êtres for romance novels. Most are about telling the story of two characters, but there are some which are all about fantasy fulfilment. The latter can be hugely enjoyable, but only if they fulfil a fantasy you happen to have.

Unfortunately, Lick was all about fantasy fulfilment, but it was not a fantasy of mine that got fulfilled, so it really didn't work for me. I'm probably a bit of a weird one, but I've never crushed on rock stars (I couldn't help but picture David as the guy on the cover, and that has absolutely no attraction to me). I don't like the music, I don't like the celebrity (neither celebrity culture nor the very fact that someone should be treated like a god because they make music people like) and I don't like the whole sex, drugs and rock and roll thing. So although David seemed like a very nice, decent guy (much too normal and centred for the lifestyle he's supposed to have), the gushing tone of the narration put me off.

Plus, the relationship between David and Ev felt a bit cringey. It all felt very immature, and I'm not having a go at NA here; I love NA. I guess it's just that I don't mind when characters who still have some maturing to do have a relationship that's age-appropriate. This felt like a much too mature relationship for these two to be attempting to have. It might have been the way Ev's kept referring to David as "my husband" in what felt like a really self-satisfied way.

Still, with all that, I didn't have trouble reading the first half, and zipped right along. The second half was much harder to get through. The whole focus is on this big fight that felt like a huge big deal made out of nothing, like a transparent effort to create conflict, even if it meant making Ev and David act like idiots. I lost all interest there, and had to force myself to finish the book.

MY GRADE: A C-.