I read this book primarily because I liked the way the first book ended. Andi, who had annoyed me throughout most of the book, seemed to grow and be content with herself. I kind of liked that the protagonist had ended up with someone other than the main male character, even if I couldn’t really understand how this insipid woman was attracting so many eligible men.

What I didn’t like:

1. The exploration of Andi’s grief. When I started this book, I knew right away that it was going to be a struggle to get through. The book is set six years after the first book ends, and Andi’s husband has just passed away. Now, I don’t mind books dealing with grief. I understand that when someone experiences loss, the grieving process can takes many shapes. My problem is that this book and the characters within it lack subtlety. It was a problem in the first book in scenes talking about intimacy, insecurities, and sex. In this book, it is a problem when exploring Andi’s grief. Also, there is a whole lot of telling, not showing in this series. There are long passages that sound like they could’ve come from a textbook about grief where Andi is talking about grief as if it’s something she’s studying from afar, not something she is wallowing in herself. It just made it very difficult to connect with her.

2. Andi. Andi as a character backslid from the end of the first book. Now, I understand she lost her husband tragically, but she is even more insufferable in this book than she was in book one. The way she treats David (yes, Andi. His name is David. Call him by his proper name, you twit!) is just awful. He is there, being caring, loving, and supportive. And she’ll flip out because he refers to her as ‘sweetheart’ because that’s what her husband used to call her. As if ‘sweetheart’ is a totally rare endearment that her husband had trademarked or something.

Also, her insecurities reach hypocritical levels in this book. She gets jealous at every woman in David’s orbit, even asking if one of them used to be a client of his when he was an escort. He mostly takes this is stride in his attempt to appease her. Later, she is going out to coffee with a man she admits is good looking and says that if she weren’t seeing David, she would be interested in him. When David sees them together and questions her, she blows up at him and says, “Jealousy doesn’t become you, David.” As if she has the high ground where that is concerned. As if her insecurities aren’t on full display at all times.

3. The ‘romance’. I honestly do not understand what David sees in her. We are supposed to believe that he loved her at first sight; loved her even after she moved on with another man, to the point that he moved to the same city that she was living in just to be in the same vicinity; loved her the entire time they were apart. And after the horrible way she’s treated him, he still supposedly loves her. Why? I don’t get it. She is selfish beyond reason. She is insecure, petty, and emotionally closed off. Honestly, she’s just plain mean! What on Earth does he get from that relationship?

4. Dialogue. I still find the dialogue atrocious in this second installment. People don’t talk the way these characters talk to each other. If I was to attempt to give examples I would have to cut and paste pretty much all the dialogue. It’s not good. I find the instances where the characters swear a perfect example. I don’t have a problem with swearing. At all. But when these characters swear, it feels so clunky and awkward and disingenuous. The scenes of intimacy struck me in the same way and I just didn’t like it at all.

Other odds and ends:

-I liked the idea of Andi going to exotic locations trying to find herself, but I didn’t really feel like I was transported. It just didn’t work for me. Especially when we get lines like: ‘The Sistine Chapel was a shitbox compared to the Incan remains of Machu Picchu.” That one sentence actually represents many of my issues with this book.

-I wish we’d seen something of David’s perspective in this book. The first showed a couple of his journal entries which were probably my favorite parts of the book. This book was strictly from Andi’s perspective, and since I don’t like Andi, I had a hard time enjoying this.

-I will say that I did appreciate the ending of this book. I won’t say exactly what happens, but it did feel like Andi actually did what she needed to do in order to be content with herself and move on with her life. But I thought the same thing at the end of book one, so who knows if it will stick?

-One last thing...this book asks the reader from the beginning to suspend disbelief to an unreal level when it asks us to believe that it’s possible that Andi and David would be in Italy at the same time and then just randomly bump into each other when Andi walks into a men’s room by mistake. Seriously? That’s a little much.