Review of ‘The words shimmer’ by Jenn Matthews
3.50 Stars. Good but not great. I have to admit I saw this cover and immediately assumed medical romance. This is not a medical romance, this is more a teachers’ romance. That’s fine and on me, since I should have read the blurb, but I do think I can pick out a few cover ideas that would better describe this book.
This is my second book by Matthews. I really enjoyed her debut ‘Hooked on you’ I do have to say I was a little disappointed that I didn’t enjoy this as much. While her writing quality and style, which is unique and I really like, was back again, I felt some of the things I enjoyed the most from ‘Hooked on you’ were missing here. Hooked was a slow burn romance, this book was a super slow- snail-paced the romance is never coming- slow burn lesbian romance book. It was just too slow and Matthews waited until there was hardly any time left in the book. In Hooked there was chemistry and intimacy between the characters so you didn’t mind the slow burn, here this book was really missing that. I had to wonder if maybe the main characters were destined to be just friends.
Hooked was a book about knitting. I was shocked by how interesting and just readable it was. This book was about teachers teaching university anatomy and younger kids gardening. Once again these are not exciting subjects by any means, but still, Matthews made this book really readable. While I have issues with how the romance unfolded, I have no problems with the overall slower paced subjects this book was about.
The last little complaint was angst. There is little angst but when it does come it was so roll-your-eyes worthy. It almost felt like Matthews didn’t want to put it in but felt she had to since this is a romance. It made me cringe and I just really wish she would have left that part out. I’m not going to go into this anymore for spoiler reasons but anyone that reads this will know what I mean. I will just say thank goodness the angsty moment doesn’t go on long and the characters start acting normal again.
Not an easy one to rate. The overall book was comfortable and I just like Matthews’ writing style, but this was not as good as ‘Hooked on You’. I’m anxious to see how other reviewers fall on this one. I would not be surprised to see some mixed reviews. There was some really good stuff here, but some things fell short. I will absolutely read Matthews again though, I like the way she writes too much not to.
An ARC was given to me for an honest review.
