Dex Remington is one of the top PC game developers in the United States. He’s handsome, smart, and numb. So damn numb that he’s not sure he’ll ever find a reason to feel again.
A chance encounter sparks intense desires in Ellie and Dex. Desires that make her want to run—and make him want to feel. A combination of lust and fear leads these young lovers down a dangerous path. Is it possible to cross a burned bridge, or are they destined to be apart forever?" (Melissa Foster)
Title: Game of Love (Love in Bloom: The Remingtons #1)
Author: Melissa Foster
Published: 2014
Publisher: Self-Published
Genre: Contemporary Romance
TL;DR Review:
For starters, this novel was so awful that I didn't finish reading it. Game of Love reads like an angsty teenager with all hormones and emotions with no sophistication, no eloquence and certainly no skill. The writing was cheesy and exaggerated and the plot line seemed to revolve around the same issue. It got so boring that I actually went and read another book (which is equally as boring but that's a story for another day). Furthermore, the main characters were needy, clingy and desperate. We're talking about adults here with jobs, not teenagers. Another point of contention I have with Game of Love is Dex's obsessive behaviour with Ellie. He constantly guilt trips her into staying by his side and if it's not guilt tripping, it is emotional blackmail. It got to the point where Ellie decided to stay! It didn't feel like she stayed out of love but rather out of necessity because he's been the one staying all this while. It was just awful, awful, awful.
Review: [May Contain Spoilers]
For starters, I didn't finish this book. I cannot find it in me to even read to the end because it just got so extremely boring and it became a chore to read it.
Game of Love is the latest addition to Foster's Love in Bloom series, making this the tenth-novel in the larger series. The moment I scrolled through the start with Foster's list of books, I knew something wouldn't go quite right with this novel. The list was far too extensive which meant that there wasn't enough time devoted to perfecting each and every novel that she writes. I pushed through.
I loved Foster's interpretation of the gamer industry (albeit a little optimistic) and it was a career that very few leading men seem to hold. Mostly because of the fat-lazy-sloppy-disgusting gamer stereotype which although has been broken by the likes of PewDiePie, has yet to change it. I was quite optimistic that this novel would be full of feels, angst and all things that make a good romance novel.
However, once Ellie was introduced (and far too early into the story, I might add), things went downhill from there. In my notes while reading, I wrote, "While Ellie sounds incredibly educated, she also sounds extremely pathetic and needy. So does Dex. Both highly educated individuals but extremely pathetic and cringe-worthy."
I also wrote, "The writing seems to be the stuff you write as a teenager, looking for an outlet for your angst, not the stuff that someone who wants to be a professional writer writes. It's just beating the same issue around the bush and not in a clever witty way. It's laying it all out there for you and expecting you to swallow the boring bullshit."
Yes, Game of Love reads like an angsty teenager who has all these pent-up emotions that he/she needs to release and is just writing it all on the page. There is no sophistication, no eloquence. Just angsty, immature teenage writing. It is like the stuff I wrote at seventeen. I cringe when I look at what I used to write. Very pathetic, very needy and very clingy and very, very desperate. It is the same cheesy stuff that people never, ever say in real life.
Not to mention, Dex is constantly blackmailing Ellie emotionally. He seemed very, very obsessive and he seems to want a girl that he USED TO KNOW. Not the woman that Ellie is today but the Ellie he used to know.
He constantly reminds and guilt-trips her her of the night she left and how that made him feel and how she should not run again. He constantly reminds her of how he was her emotional-support-rock and allowed her to climb in through his window and cuddle. And he never stops complaining about how much it hurt. We get it, Dex, you were upset that you were just a one-night stand, no matter how much you love her. GET OVER IT. (If I was Ellie, I would have ran as well. And ran so far away from this creep)
It was so bad that Ellie decided to stay. It didn't feel as if Ellie was staying because she loved him because let's face it, throughout reading this novel, not once did I feel like Ellie loved him. Ellie respected him and trusted him but she felt no inch of love. It also felt like she was staying out of necessity for his feelings because he's always been the one to stay so now it was her turn.
And don't even get me started on the sex. It's the most boring sex I've ever read and trust me, I have read boring sex.
There is nothing more I would like to do than to remove this from my Kobo.
Some Quotes: (Fair warning, creep alert)
Chapter 1: "By the time they were teenagers, he'd craved so much more of her than just friendship, and when she'd come to him four years ago, he'd thought they'd finally fall into each other's arms for good and he'd be able to finally show her how much he loved her."
Chapter 9: "She could still feel his heart beating against hers, his hand covering her lower back, the other cupping the back of her head, and the way his embrace had felt like he was claiming her as his own."
Chapter 13: "Ellie, I'm sorry. Don't go reticent on me, please. This is so hard. I'm trying, I'm really trying to stay with you, to stay with us, but I don't know what you expect of me. I hurt, Ellie. Every fucking time that you clamp down on your feelings. Every time you shut me out, it's like a gunshot to my heart. A man can love a woman for only so long without it being reciprocated. On some level, you must know that."
Rating: 1/5
Other Details: I read the Kindle edition, approximately 230 pages and published 2014.