Review: French Kissing

French Kissing by Catherine Sanderson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I'm actually so mad at this ridiculous book.

It started out as an okay piece of fluff, then it was just dull, but finally it just crossed too many lines.

Let's start with the small stuff.

Sally is an English woman living in France. She has a young daughter and has recently split from her cheating partner. This book follows her attempts at internet dating, and how she deals with life as a single parent. It's basically like reading a really boring diary. There's a bunch of stuff about Lila, her daughter, that's only going to be interesting to other mothers, there's a tedious blow-by-blow of EVERY encounter she has, and there's so much French it's an absolute chore trying to translate it all. There's very little in the way of plot, meaning there's no drive to keep reading. There's no romance, there's no fun, there's just basically nothing interesting happening here at all.

Now, I'm actually in the process of learning French myself, so it was interesting trying my hand at translating some of the included phrases. But I eventually got bored, then frustrated, and I can't imagine how annoying this much French would be to someone completely unfamiliar with the language. It was an absolute turn off.

Then, it got worse.

It graduated from boring to ridiculous, with Sally meeting some pretty dodgy men and being naively charmed by things that should have set off alarm bells. The fact that she gets all excited when she meets a man who 'doesn't seem able to take no for an answer' was a big disappointment. Something like that would have me running in the opposite direction, but Sally seems totally okay putting herself in risky situations all in the name of love. I really think there needed to be more skepticism here - everyone knows the Internet is a dodgy place but this book wants to completely overlook that.

This made me so incredibly mad and I was so done with this book from that point onward. I pretty much skimmed the rest, and I'm honestly glad I did because it was a waste of time investing in this one. There's no likable characters and the stream of suitors just gets more and more ridiculous.

So, yeah. What should have been a lighthearted piece of fluff ended up making me furious and loathsome towards it. WHAT. A. JOKE.

Recommendation: Avoid like the plague.

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