Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I was really hoping to love this one; the book has a fantastic premise. What a pity the author made the whole thing hang from about eighty Big Misunderstandings and four hundred Massive Coincidences.
My God this book was more melodramatic than a telenovela!
I do like a fair-haired hero, so at least the book had that going for it.
Indivisible is hampered by some severe over-writing; the epilogue is about as long as any other author's entire book! (And yes, I'm aware of the irony of writing such a long review to complain about an over-written book!) Everything is explained and explained some more. And honestly, no reader wants pages of details about mortgages and the heroine's new rental property, nor does anybody care for the life story of the old lady in the front pew of the church! Stick to the story!
Even worse, the plot centres on the most unlikeable heroine I have ever come across in fiction. It is entirely `telling' instead of `showing', which made the prose devoid of emotion for me; I SAW everything happen, but didn't FEEL any of it.
But the book's biggest failing was Charlie, the heroine. Her husband is a Navy SEAL. Instead of - oh, I don't know - finding out what a SEAL is, she spends the first year of their marriage happily ignorant.
- She doesn't know the other wives of the team.
- She doesn't realise that he - one of the world's most highly-trained military operatives - actually goes to war zones.
- She has a huge tantrum when he is deployed, and complains that it's not her fault she didn't believe him when they first met and he told her he had a dangerous job.
- She has another tantrum when she discovers he - a covert operative - won't be able to call her every day.
- She has another tantrum when he calls her and can't talk for long, and instead of caring this might be the last time she EVER talks to him, she gets in a huff and hangs up in a bad mood.
- She blames HER HUSBAND for her rape.
- She cries nonstop for pretty much the entire book. `Oh poor ME. I'M so lonely. I'M so scared. MY husband chose his work over precious ME.' She does not seem to realise you can't just walk away from the Navy whenever you want, just because your wife is needy and wants you to stay home.
- She sends her husband naughty text messages and sexy pictures throughout the day, when he's in very serious mission-related meetings. This is Gideon's problem too - as if someone this important to the military would be having a sex-text session with his wife in the middle of discussing important military operations.
Charlie, HONEY, the point of being in the Special Forces is that you can NEVER tell anyone where you've been or what you've done. Grow up and get with the program, you selfish brat.
Here's part of Charlie's tantrum when her husband calls her from overseas:
"Whatever. Just go. I have a class to get to anyway."...
...Charlie felt a little bit of guilt for being so bitchy, but first he chose his job over her and left.
Uh, no Charlie. You married a SEAL. Deal with it.
Then we got to the birth scene which - I suspect - the author intended to be funny. I found it crude and disgusting. The general obsession with babies in the final third of the story completely detracted from the main plotline, and I found the weird switch of focus to pregnancy and childrearing to be a disappointment. It wasn't helped by the likes of:
"The lump in her throat was so huge she was sure one of the babies had crawled up there."
Ugh. Seriously?!
All of the author's female characters are bitchy and nagging, and it made me really ashamed for women. They're always snipping at their men and picking fights if they don't have their man's attention 100% of the time. I couldn't find anybody to like in this book.
Not that the men are any better. They're all stereotypes.
-The sleazy baddie who does evil things for absolutely no reason - while practically twirling his moustache to illustrate how BAD he is.
-The suspicious brother who's always lived in the hero's shadow. The brother is supposed to soon be graduating as a doctor, and yet every single time there's a medical issue - like the heroine FAINTING in front of him - he has no idea what to do.
-The perfect hero who treats his bitchy wife like a goddess and claims responsibility for all of her tantrums.
-The heroine's caring, perfect brother.
The gross incompetence of one of the SEALs on the team was utterly ridiculous. It's next to impossible to become a SEAL, and the guy's slapstick antics that kept getting them shot at were, quite frankly, insulting to the Special Forces.
The choppy switching between flashbacks and the present day was distracting. I LOVE stories told in two parts like that, but only if the author is skilled at making the transitions in time. It did not work here - we seriously even had flashbacks in the epilogue! It was too much too often.
The author has a tendency to use "off of" on a regular basis. It's a grammatically poor expression, and painful to read in published writing. The constant italicising of "He", "Him" and "His" to talk about the rapist was supposed to show some sort of detachment I suppose, but it was used with such frequency it nearly drove me insane.
I would love for this story to be rewritten with better pacing and less annoying characters, as it is a fantastic concept that was completely ruined. Perhaps with more experience the author will be able to do her great idea some justice.
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Indivisible
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