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This is not the kind of Romance that can keep my interest.

Whenever either of them talks about why they want to be with the other it’s always described as this “need” or as being “mysterious.” How is that interesting? It doesn’t even seem to have anything to do with who these two people actually are (at one point Richard expresses fucking surprise when it turns out Elise has a bunch of really great qualities that have nothing to do with her beauty or charisma).

Elise’s motivation: was given two predictions regarding a man in her future and decides Richard fits those predictions. Richard’s motivation: saw pic of hottie actress and immediately fell in love with her. The thing is, neither of the characters is that interesting. The book almost has only the one character because Richard dominates so much of the story (naturally, it is his story, after all) but Elise certainly ought to get a lot of attention from the reader. So, why am I such a hater? It came down to the fact that the characters had no personal agency. It would have been such a poorly executed joke, though, that I had to assume I was meant to take the story seriously.

Honestly, I wondered at one point if the entire book was a joke poking fun at Romance. However, I like and read Romances that are much better than this one. This is not a problem for me as I like and read Romance. You see, even though I described this as sci-fi it’s pretty much straight up Romance (with one exception that I’ll go into later). Of course, by the time that happens I’d mostly lost interest in the story and was spending my time wondering why.

As he moves closer, in emotion and in time, to Elise McKenna the style changes to traditional story-telling (Richard, being a writer, even comments on his own style changes). It’s easy to read over even if it’s not necessarily compelling in a narrative sense. I actually enjoyed the point by point movement through his days. Richard’s style begins as one of dictatorial lists of his activities and feelings (with a bit more naval-gazing than I can tolerate in books but he did just learn that he is going to die soon so I should probably forgive him that).