Whisper To Me

Whisper to Me

My Rating: four-stars

A hot and consuming New Adult romance about a wayward musician and the one girl who keeps him grounded…
At college, Rachel has a reputation for being a sarcastic flirt with a thing for star athletes. No one at school knows that she’d had her heart ripped to shreds by her high school sweetheart, who’d driven them both off the side of the road on a borrowed motorcycle, and then abandoned her. No one knows the real Rachel Mattson—except one person…
Ever since he helped nurse his sister’s feisty best friend back to health, pierced bass player Kai Nakos has been head over heels in love. But the supposed bad boy can’t risk letting Rachel know the truth—especially now that the two of them are back in their hometown for the summer, together for the first time since the months following that fateful night. Never mind that Rachel’s ex is back, groveling for her forgiveness.
Shaken by her ex’s return, Rachel finds herself turning to the one guy she knows she can trust. Kai is willing to hide his feelings for her, just to have Rachel touch him again. After all, this is only a temporary fling. Until it becomes something more. But maybe it had been more all along.

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I was thrilled when I received an ARC of “Whisper to Me” by Christina Lee! I’d just read “Before You Break” and thoroughly loved it. So as soon as I received my ARC I downloaded it and started reading, even though I had a long list of books on my review list.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t as blown away by “Whisper to Me” as I was by “Before You Break.” I found the characters extremely hard to connect with. And the writing had too much exposition, for my taste, and not enough interaction or dialogue. I would’ve liked to have seen some of the events Rachel and Kai thought about, rather than just had them “told” to me through the unending paragraphs of the character’s thoughts.

I think the lack of showing was one of the biggest issues in “Whisper to Me.” We were told people treated Kai a certain way, but we never SAW it. We were told Rachel acted one way at home and another a college, but we never SAW it. Flashbacks would have worked nicely, especially when working with Rachel’s recovery period. I think that was a huge missed opportunity that would have just sent this book over the edge with raw emotion.

Another thing that was an issue for me was the poor foreshadowing. The reader was almost told how the book was going to unfold. As soon as I knew Rachel had a head injury and had to have follow-up exams for complications, I knew she’d end up in the hospital with some type of illness stemming from her head.

And here is what it boils down to. Kai was a hot, sexy leading male character. Just how we like them. A bad boy musician. Rachel was a vixen. She knew her way around a bedroom. She was sensual and beautiful—just how the male lead character likes. And that *should* equal sexual tension. But “Whisper to Me” didn’t have it. Oh, there was sex. And sex. And sex. And sex. And when they weren’t having some type of sexual encounter they were thinking about it. Don’t get me wrong, I love sexy books. I’m far from a prude. Give me a good sex scene… hot and steamy and full of rippling tension so my fingers ache from squeezing my kindle too tightly—I love it. But in this book, it was just sex. It fell flat. Maybe because there was too much? I’m not sure.

As for the characters, I just didn’t gel with them. They had issues and Ms. Lee tried to write them with faults and quirks to make them seem real, and she did that nicely. I just didn’t connect. I found their constant whining of, “I love her, but she doesn’t love me” And “I love him, but he doesn’t love me” tiresome.

BOTTOM LINE: I was really excited to read “Whisper to Me.” But ultimately, I was disappointed. Although it wasn’t for me, I still find Christina Lee an exceptional author and I won’t stop reading her work! I look forward to her next project.

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Michelle

I'm an award-winning YA and NA author... but, really? I'm the wife of an amazing man, mom of four awesome kids, a reader of words, and writer of stories. I love candles and books, think garden gnomes are creepy and M&Ms are the perfect food (especially peanut butter). I live and write in Texas, but was raised in Flint, Michigan and will always think of the Great Lakes state as home.

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