TBR Challenge: ‘HER PERFECT AFFAIR’, by Priscilla Oliveras

The topic of this month is Series (book that is part of a series)

Published: 2018

Genre: contemporary

My Rating: 3 stars

Part of a series: Matched to Perfection #2

I loved this book at the beginning, but then I lost interest in the story

Several bloggers considered this book among the best of last year. That is why I bought it.

I read the first of the series and it was quite a disappointment (here my review, in Spanish). However, I saw good reviews of this one and yes, it is better, but not an unforgettable novel.

At the beginning, it was wonderful. A ‘Friends to lovers’ story, one of my favourite topics. Rosa Fernandez is always the responsible one among her sisters. She is going to work as a librarian in a Catholic school. Therefore, you guess she is a little bit conservative.

Jeremy Taylor is a friend of her sister Yasmine. Nevertheless, in these past months, he has been closer to Rosa, and has helped her in these difficult times, after losing her father.

She’s got a crush on him. He finds her attractive. Therefore, it is only a matter of time that both of them stop pretending to be just friends and try something different.

The opportunity presents itself when they are together in Yasmine’s wedding. They talk; they dance and, in the end, spend the night together in Rosa’s hotel room.

The morning after is a little bit awkward for both of them. However, things get complicated when Rosa discovers that she is pregnant. She tells Jeremy, he offers marriage, but she says no. It is not a good reason to get married. Nevertheless, he wants to be part of her life. When she has a pregnancy sickness that is awful because she is always very tired, he helps her.

The setting is the best thing of this book. You really feel like you are in Chicago, and see certain differences between living in the suburbs and the city. Moreover, I am so glad to see Puerto Rican characters! A rich culture shows very human relationships. Because, in reality, you have family and friends, whereas in Romancelandia our heroes and heroines many times look like they are isolated plants, not related to anybody. Their social and spiritual life sound so poor…! And here, in this book, you find a rich tapestry of relationships, a family, friends, a community, That’s great. No, really. Awesome. Closer to the reality I live in than the majority of romance novels I read. 

The problem for me was the plot. The rest of the books is basically, Rosa feeling awful and Jeremy trying to help. Neither of them confesses his/her true feelings to the other. It could have been something great —‘Hey, I really like you, I guess if we are together more time we could really be a couple. Let’s try’.

However, no, they do not do that.

I just did not get it. The reason why Rosa feels guilty about her mother’s death was ridiculous. The problems that Jeremy had with his family sounded utterly juvenile. Perhaps that was the point: common people complicating their lives and their relationships for flimsy reasons. Because we humans sometimes do that, make simple things difficult just because we do not see straight.

So it was wonderful at the beginning, I kept on reading really enjoying the atmosphere, the people, how Jeremy finds a family and a community that embraces him —but more or less at 75 % of the book I started skimming, because it was quite boring.

It did not help that, although the majority of Spanish words in the book were well written and expressed the feelings of the characters, sometimes there were spelling problems, or question marks and accents that should have been there and I missed them.

Anyway, it started as a 5 or 4-star novel and it ended like a 2-star. That was my experience. In the end, my rating lies somewhere in the middle, 3-stars.

Frankly, I do not think I’ll try the third instalment in the series.