I have read the following statement a number of times in reviews where it seems that the writer wants to soften the blow and it is applicable in my case as well. I really wanted to like Losing It, I adore the plot device, the oft used yet somehow never old one of, mistaken identity or perhaps not even bothering with the identity part at all. It sparked the relationship at the center of the wildly successful television show Grey’s Anatomy spawning one of the greatest television super couples of recent memory, yet somehow it falls short in Cora Carmack’s debut novel.
Bliss is a 22 year old theater student in her final year of school and *gasp* a virgin! Why? As far as I could ascertain because she is completely and absolutely neurotic and not in that appealing Woody Allenesque fashion from his Annie Hall years. The story opens with confessing her dark secret to her bully of a best friend whose solution is to drag her bodily off to the bar and find the first halfway appealing man to deflower our Bliss.
Enter Garrick, a gorgeous Brit simply minding his own business reading Shakespeare in the corner. A perfect candidate to help Bliss out of her current predicament, how she could look this gift horse in the mouth I do not know. They end up at her place moments from “fait accompli” when Bliss chokes coming up with possibly the lamest excuse of all time and runs off. Of course the next morning when she attends class her new theater professor is none other than the plummy Garrick from the night before.
Throughout the novel the reader is never sure what precisely Garrick sees in Bliss and Bliss is one of those adolescent seeming characters who don’t seem to have a clear idea of what they want. In and of itself not an objectionable trait but there seems to be no real reason why Bliss has remained a virgin so long. Is she waiting for religious reasons? Fine. Has she been unlucky? No. This character was extremely hard for me to relate to not because of her age or even her virginity but because she seemed to have no clear reasoning for the choices she made. It was difficult to see how other characters would find her arbitrary nature attractive. Her character lacked motivation and thus I found the momentum in the story itself lacking as well.
Losing It was a fluffy enjoyable read but just not for me.
TITLE: Losing It
AUTHOR: Cora Carmack
RATING: 2 1/2 Stars
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Penny Dreadful Book Reviews (Est. 2013) 