About the Book
Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items?
- Enjoy a drunken night out.
- Ride a motorcycle.
- Go camping.
- Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.
- Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.
- And… do something bad.
But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job.
Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.
But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior…
My Review
I enjoy stories that give us something outside the norm of what we consistently see sometimes. Our two main characters I felt gave us something a little different, and I really wasn’t ever quite sure how they were going to react to certain situations or what they had planned next. Chloe is a bit rough around the edges – wealthy but independent, strong-willed while chronically ill. Red seems like the bad boy type, but is actually more sensitive and unsure than I would have thought him to be. It was interesting to read the dynamic between the two, and the start-stop relationship they had. I thought the idea behind Chloe’s list was interesting, but there were definitely parts of the book that read very slowly and were harder to keep my interest. The back and forth between Chloe and Red got a little tedious toward the end, but overall I did enjoy the book and how it stayed light-hearted throughout.
4 stars
