I was frustrated by this and after sitting on it, I think I know where my frustration comes from.
Too Late stars Sloan, a girl with a rough past trying to make a better future for herself and her handicapped brother. Her boyfriend Asa has been there for the past two years, taking care of her financially. While it's clear she's fallen out of love with him, she doesn't know how to get out of her bad situation.
With Asa throwing parties every day and night, she doesn't get much sleep. So when she get's woken up by an exceptionally attractive guy in class, she's startled that she immediately starts flirting with him.
Carter is an undercover agent, hell bent on getting his target: drug dealer Asa. At 25, he finds it more tiresome than anything else that he was thrown back into college courses. Yet when he meets a stunning girl in his Spanish class, he's happy to have a nice distraction. Too bad his distraction turns out to be Asa's girl.
Asa has been dealing drugs for years, but now he's making it really big. With his girl at his side, loyal and gorgeous, he thinks he can take on the world. However, he's suspicious that not all is right with his inner circle. He knows something is betraying him, but he needs to find out who.
Pros:
-I liked the plot. I thought it was different than her usual high school angst. This was actually about a character involved in a job rather than just chilling at home or school and dealing with feelings.
-The writing. It was classic Coho: solid grammar, decent prose. Her writing doesn't pull out SAT words that nobody ever uses (like Cassie Clare) and it doesn't make me want to rip out my hair by being awful (like E.L. James).
-The angst. I'm a sucker for it and this had it in spades.
Cons:
-The insta-love was more obvious in this than any of her other books. Slammed was cute and we saw them fall much like a high school couple would. Maybe Someday was about fighting attraction before realizing they were falling for each other. In this story, they just are crazy about each other from the start. To the point where he was willing to risk his job for her.
-The characterization. Carter was stale, Sloan didn't appeal to me, and Jon felt like a villain in a Twilight fanfiction. The only character I was intrigued by was Asa. I actually liked his downward spiral.
-The silly FBI/cop stuff. My uncle used to be FBI and I've got a lot of cops in the family. Yeah, I wasn't feeling it. He was the worst undercover agent ever.
I think the problem is that this feels like fanfiction that had potential. These days it's all about self-publishing and I get that there are some gems out there. However, I am a firm believer that self-published books don't get the same treatment that classically published books receive. They're not properly edited, don't go through as many hands, etc. The best example is Fifty Shades of Grey, a piece of garbage that was "edited" by the author's husband. There are basic issues throughout that a properly published book (shame on you Random House) would have edited out.
This felt like a self-published book and that's because it was just a wattpad series. I think if this had taken her as many months as her prior novels, it would have been more thought out, worked from beginning to end, and I ultimately would have loved it. I don't want to read fanfiction. Those characters (and fanfiction authors can argue this until they're blue in the face) are taken from somewhere else and they don't have to develop them. It's the same for this - nothing was fully developed and that hindered it.
I personally think CoHo did this so she could write an erotica romance book like her friends (Abbi Glines, Jamie McGuire, Molly McAdams) without losing her spot in the fiction category at bookstores.
Overall, it was okay. Colleen definitely has better books out there. There is this perception that Colleen Hoover is perfect and after reading Maybe Someday, I was screaming to anyone who would listen. However, the more books she writes, the more I am starting to realize that she's not the greatest thing since sliced bread.
And as much as it kills me to say, I do think the hype has gone to her head. I wasn't impressed by her author notes throughout this story.
Final rating: 3 stars
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