Review/Update: Love Means Zero

A couple of weeks ago, I partook in a blog tour for Love Means Zero by Daisy Jordan. I posted everything, but a full review. I had read a significant portion, and had decided to share my thoughts to that point, and promised a full review when I was done. And I have finally finished it.

For the full information on the book, please see my previous post HERE.

My Final Thoughts: When I first started reading this book, I loved it. It was fun and exciting, and there were references to things I remembered from my own high school and college days (references to Friends that I could totally relate to, for one). It was fun and somewhat nostalgic. I was really, really liking it.

But, by about halfway through, it started to get old. Everything was happy, sunny, rosy. Hilton had big break after big break after big break, and it’s so unrealistic. Ninety-nine percent of the time, life just doesn’t happen that way. For anyone. Now, granted, I say that with little knowledge of the culture around professional tennis, but still. It’s not like it’s a different planet!

I still liked Hilton (for the most part – more to come) and the tennis scene, and wanted to see how things came together. And that’s what kept me reading, despite the feeling that the book is just too dang long. For me, the middle third (roughly) just dragged on and on. I think a lot of the descriptive stuff could be omitted, as well as much of the way-too-detailed tennis stuff, to make this a tighter story. There were too many moments of, “oh, c’mon! Get on with the story already!”

As I just said, I mostly liked Hilton, until the latter portion of the book. I felt like she was as much of a bitch as she thought others were. Her attitude was just so hostile. So, Haidin was a bit of a jerk, but she didn’t know him – just saw him. And working for him, I can’t imagine any employer allowing his assistant to act the way she did at first.

Another thing I didn’t like was that I felt there was an excessive amount of profanity – especially the F-bomb. While I get that some people curse like sailors, not everyone does. The fact that just about every character in this book had a potty mouth was quite annoying. Yes, almost everyone swears occasionally, and some more than others, but I don’t think people swear as much as they do in this book. At least not based on my own life experiences! And, really, when the narrator is swearing left and right (in a third-person book), to me that’s just way over the top.

I did like the latter fourth (or so) of the book. There was more action (although still some over-descriptiveness), and the plot finally went somewhere. I saw things coming into place, and was satisfied with most of the angles and how they played out. That said, the ending was unfulfilling. There are too many questions for me to be happy. Too many things left up in the air. What I didn’t realize before now is that apparently this is one book of several about these characters. Hopefully there’s one in the works that ties up Hilton’s loose ends. That said, yes, I will seek out the other books already published. I liked the characters enough to want to read what’s already been written about them. And I hope to read future books by Daisy Jordan, too.

My Final Rating: 3.5 stars

FTC Disclosure: All items reviewed were either obtained by me for my own enjoyment or sent (from the author, publisher, publicist, via tour sites, etc.) in exchange for an honest review. I receive no monetary compensation for my posts. All opinions expressed are my own.

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