Originally posted at The Wandering Fangirl.

The thing about a novel like this, a novel that declares everything it entails in the title...you have to live up to that name. You have to create a first moment of connection without sinking to the dreaded paranormal romance ~Instaluv~ trap. You have to create true chemistry between the leads. You have to make things believable, because if you're going to tell me that two characters are going to fall in love on a flight to London, then I want to believe in it so wholeheartedly that I can't argue against it.

Sadly, this novel doesn't exactly get there. I can see the connections between Hadley and Oliver, and why they'd be drawn to each other. The problem is, it felt like there wasn't enough time for love to happen. In trying to make the novel seem much more than just a simple romance novel, Hadley's entire reason for the trip, her father's wedding to a new woman, dominates the novel, not the romance. I found myself caring less and less as time went on, because 70% of what I was reading was about Hadley and her father's relationship. I didn't care what happened with Oliver by the end of the novel, and instead had way more questions than answers. When separating Hadley's growth and her relationship with her father from the romance, it was actually a pretty insightful and touching novel. When separating Hadley and Oliver from the family stuff...it fell flat.

This could have been a really fantastic contemporary romance novel -- and there's no shame in that, absolutely none -- but it got bogged down in content that turned it into an entirely different book. I wanted epic romance, dammit.