Lead Me Back

I woke up at 2:00 and couldn't go back to sleep, so I decided to pick what I thought would be a sweet easy book, that would leave me with warm fuzzy feelings. This was not it.Firstly, I find [a:C.D. Reiss 6896405 C.D. Reiss https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1448479589p2/6896405.jpg]'s style anxiety-inducing. Something about the sharp dialogue and the abrupt ending of the scenes really irritated me. I often felt that I didn't have a good grasp of what I had read after I was done with a chapter. Why did the characters feel the way they did? Why did they make those choices? Who knows. I certainly didn't.Additionally, I thought too much was happening in the story. Either his split band storyline or her sexual assault storyline would have been enough. But both of them at once? That was definitely overkill. I did, however, feel that her conversation with Brenda was insightful and that it treated the subject matter with some depth. However, it is literally the only thing I liked about this book and why it has 2 stars instead of 1. Finally, I could not connect with either of the main characters. I actively disliked him, and her actions made no sense to me. There were a couple of times where she told him to leave her alone or to contact her at a different time and yet he would turn up when he felt like because he just had to see her. I found that really irritating. Also, when her picture was put in the papers because she was with him, she had legitimate concerns about what that would mean for her privacy and her business' chances if she kept seeing him, but somehow by the end of the conversation with her sister that was suddenly a non-issue? Then when he found out about her 'controversial' past, he was ready to drop her like a hot potato? And she didn't point out the double standard inherent in that decision. Instead by their next conversation, she was apologising to him and then staying away for his own good. WHAT?!!!?!?!?! And then it was never discussed again, how his reaction to hearing she was abused by her boss was to ask her to cool their relationship off. I need to stop writing this review now because I'm getting even farther away from the illusion of sleep. But I just had to document my feelings so that the next time I was tempted to pick up another [a:C.D. Reiss 6896405 C.D. Reiss https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1448479589p2/6896405.jpg] book, I could come back to this and remember how irritated I was.