Wildest Dreams by Stefany Rattles

A Romance Novel published by Stefany Rattles (09/28/14)

Summary:

Alaina never went to college. She’s of average intelligence, but she’s given a chance at a career when she’s accepted at a law firm in Arkansas. She is a short brunette with hazel eyes and a penchant for engaged men. Alaina is excited to start her new job, but soon gets caught up in the man she crushed on in high school, a case involving a young Russian girl in the Witness Protection Program, and threats telling her to stay away from Rayden (the engaged man).

Keywords:

 Romance, Cheating Fiance, Female POV, Jealousy

My Review:

The first thing any reader will notice about Wildest Dreams is the well-crafted book cover that indicates the book is solidly a romance (between a man and a woman) and that the eBook has not been formatted. The author, it would seem, has forgotten to justify her paragraphs to indent for dialogue and new paragraphs. This makes for a book that is physically difficult to read, unless she was continuing in the book’s stream of consciousness writing style. Clever or forgetful, who knows?

What can only be deemed an oversight is the abundance of obvious grammatical errors, where the incorrect word is used or spelled wrong, commas are skipped over, and possessives are given oddly spaced apostrophes. The tenses used also skip from present to past without missing a beat (still could be from stream of consciousness). Many of the sentences are short and choppy and a lot of the action is told to us by the author/narrator Alaina.

I adore the character names used, Alaina and Rayden being my favorites, but I couldn’t get into the romance of the story. To me, it was unbelievable, unrealistic and became dull and lifeless. Why does Alaina even appeal to these career-men? We are not told much about her outside of her fascination for Rayden and her involvement in the present action with her job and the Russian girl.

It is difficult to pull off a romance between an engaged man and another woman without making the characters unlikeable and Rattles was not able to balance this morally-gray area to my satisfaction as a reader. Rayden is ready to leave it all behind for Alaina, his job and his fiancé and his parents’ approval, but why? It also makes him less appealing as the lead man and less appealing professionally. He lost my sympathy when he actively pursued another woman when he was in a committed relationship (no matter what the terms). I was also very perturbed when he took advantage of Alaina when she was drunk and neither the characters nor the author seem fazed by this act of rape.

I was impressed when Rattles was able to dish out an epilogue that was able to wrap up the main story without giving away the entire happily ever after. I was also delighted with each new character’s introduction and Rattles’ instant description of what they looked like and a quick personality description.

I received a free copy of this book for an honest, non-reciprocal review.

This novel was published by Stefany Rattles September 28, 20104 and is available on Amazon here.

TLDR Star Rating: 2.50

Links for more information:

Stefany Rattles’ Website

Goodreads Profile