KL Donn, $0.99, ISBN 978-1386376316
Contemporary Romance, 2017
Upon her BFF’s insistence, True Sidero writes actual letters—the ones on paper, coming in an envelope with stamps and all—to Lena’s cousin Maverick Conners.
Lena believes that this would help True get over being cheated on by her ex. Well, hopefully getting True’s letters will also improve Maverick’s way with punctuation.
Looking around my bunker, I’m waiting to see if someone is gonna jump out laughing. When nothing happens, all I can think is, is this shit for real? Who the fuck writes this shit?
She’s not real. She can’t be.
Fucking, Lena.
What’s with that comma after the eff word?
Crumpling the crazy letter in my hand, I toss it in the trash on my way out to the ops tent. I got shit to do. I can’t be thinking about how much I could relate to this girl if she actually exists.
Which she doesn’t.
Fucking, Lena.
Seriously, what’s with the comma? This kind of thing is so distracting, especially when Dear Maverick is supposed to be a halfway-epistolary romance.
Speaking of which, an epistolary format is supposed to showcase charming or interesting correspondences. Here, all I get is Lena whining about how hard her life is, how hard being a nurse is, how she is clearly the one suffering the greatest burden in the world, and Maverick responding to these letters by assuring our heroine that she’s still awesome and not some annoying windbag like some nasty people would accuse her of being.
Because she has found a source of free therapy, True puts out to Maverick as a reward, and then they get married and give me two unnecessary epilogues to assure me that True is still around instead of being overwhelmed by having to do a grocery list that she completely loses her mind and has to be sedated 23 hours a day.
Also, I don’t recall getting any good reason as to why these two are exchanging actual letters and not doing emails or Skype. I know some military bases may not allow for unrestricted internet access, but still, stating that would help calm that part of my brain that keeps asking me why these two are being old school.
Furthermore, given how terrible Lena is at managing her emotions, won’t it be better for Maverick to be available 24/7 for her to seek free therapy from?
Anyway, Dear Maverick is a quasi-epistolary romance that showcases letters from an overwrought heroine and her enabler in a less than interesting manner. The romance resembles more of a therapy session than anything else. Neither character is memorable, and True is more in need of a chill pill than a pee-pee.
All in all, this one is more of a leave it than take it.
