Review of On the Rocks by Riley Scott

I’m a bit on the fence with this one. I think it was a solid, slightly above-average story, but I didn’t really enjoy it like I wanted to. This is my third book read by Scott, and I have always liked her writing style. Her books flow well and they just have a good reading feel to them. However, I don’t know why but I can’t get past only liking her writing to actually really connecting to her story choices, characters, or both.

I keep reading Scott in hopes that her good writing style will eventually mesh with a storyline that I just love since I feel like she has the potential for a book that will be a big hit among WLW readers. I think the first strike this book had against something I would love, was a trope I’m not a huge fan of. This is a trope that is not often mentioned in reading challenges and fan’s favorites, but it’s pretty common in WLW romance, no strings attached. The whole “we can be together but it is just for fun, so it isn’t serious and we’ll never actually fall in love.” Yeah, right. I’m about 50/50 on this trope. Sometimes it is almost comical seeing characters do just about anything to deny how hard they have fallen in love, and it can end up pretty sweet. But other times the characters will be such saboteurs to anything meaningful that it is almost a little depressing. Unfortunately, this book was more the latter and I never connected to the characters and their self-destructing ways.

Another issue I had was not just the characters’ actions, but the characters as a whole. While both characters were reasonably likeable, at least at times, I had trouble caring about them. While they were late 20’s early 30’s, at times I felt they were even younger. As other reviewers have mentioned, this book had a lot of drinking and even random odd cigarette smoking. Half the time I felt like the characters were just of age and enjoying that freedom of being able to drink legally anytime. And then other times I felt like the characters were in their 50’s or 60’s, because of how jaded they were from past relationships. Yes, every relationship that ends unexpectedly hurts, and does for way longer than should be possible, but these characters were acting like the possibility to love ends at the age of 30.

In the end, this was not a story for my personal tastes, but even saying that star I still read every page and felt the book flowed well because of Scott’s good writing. I think if someone could connect to these characters more than I did, they might like this book much more. I’m still going to keep reading Scott since I like her writing style and I believe eventually they will be a book that really clicks for me. 3.25 Stars.

A copy was given to me for an honest review.