Review of Cure for Insomnia by Laina Villeneuve
A well written book but I just didn’t really connect with it. This is my fifth book by Villeneuve and while I like her writing style, for some reason I could not get into this story. I was excited for diverse characters with STEM jobs, but I found myself picking this book up and finding it too easy to put down. A lot of my fellow reviewers really liked this one so I think it’s just a case of the book not working with my personal romance preferences.
I’m a huge first person fan, but it doesn’t always work well in romance (unless you do first person but with 2 POV’s). I think that was part of the issue for me since I could not connect at all with one of the mains named Remi. I found myself really liking Karla, who’s POV we are in, so it was hard for me when I didn’t care for her love interest. I actually had to wonder, early into the book, if Remi was a place holder until the woman of Karla’s dreams actually appeared. Something else I noticed was how Remi viewed her brother at times. Remi’s brother is on the autism spectrum and I felt like Remi was accusing Karla of changes in his behavior when really he seemed to be handling more than expected. I felt like Karla got a lot of blame for reasons that didn’t really hold up and it made it even harder for me to connect to Remi.
I thought the pace of the romance was pretty good. I was happy that it took time to develop and I felt the chemistry between the mains especially after they had sex. They had clever and fun flirting games, between each other, and Karla was a little spicier than one might imagine. The sex scenes added that needed intimacy and helped with their connection.
As other reviewers have mentioned there is a New Adult storyline. I have to be honest that I didn’t care for it. The college student’s storyline was bigger than I expected, and the problem is it never really went anywhere. I kept waiting for something bigger to happen, since we spent a lot of time with this secondary character, but instead it fell a bit flat. I also wasn’t crazy about how Karla interacted with said student. I understand that Karla works with diabetic patients but I thought she was a little preachy at times.
There are a lot of really good reviews for this book. I wish I could say that I enjoyed it as much as my reviewer friends did. There just wasn’t quite enough going on, besides the romance, to really keep my attention. I do like how Villeneuve writes, but her horse/ranch type books, like Cowgirl 101, seem to fit me better. While this was not really a Lex book, I can see why other romance fans would enjoy this. I would suggest reading some other reviews to see if this book might be for you. 3.25 Stars.
A copy was given to me for a review.
