Title: An Indecent Proposal
Author: Julia Ross
Publisher/Year: Head of Zeus 12/1/16
Length:   187 Pages

Overview

Sara is 25 and has recently moved to Basel to work on a doctorate in cytogenetics in a laboratory. Having recently broken up with her boyfriend, she is feeling depressed, shaken and lost. Then she meets Leo and Oscar at the laboratory, and to her surprise feels strongly attracted to both of them.

Blue-eyed, fair-haired Leo is gentle and sensitive. Oscar, his best friend, is the opposite: dark-haired and brown-eyed, and direct to the point of brusqueness. They make her a proposition – that she spend four days with them in Barcelona, going along with anything they suggest. The only condition is that no relationships are to be formed. But what happens in Spain perturbs her so much that she finds it impossible keep to their agreement…

My Thoughts

Thanks to the folks over at Netgalley for getting me access to this book as i’m always looking for new authors and stories to get into.  Based on the cover art and the description, i was into what this story had to offer and i guess it was ‘ok’

What we have here is a story of a girl who’s trying to put her life back together after she finds her boyfriend in bed with her best friend.  So as her life is continuing now that she’s found a new place to do her masters work, she’s also found herself being swept up by 2 really good looking guys who happen to be best friends.

Of course they are so different that she’s able to find things about both that really make her excited but then she’s also finding that it’s quite hard to make a decision between the two since both arouse and excite her in ways that the others don’t and in fact in ways that kind of brought the demise to her relationship. It’s only when they offer her a weekend of more passion and intrigue that we see that her hand is forced to make a decision.

The way that this story is written is that we’re focusing for a bit around 5 years in the future when we are at Sara’s best friend’s wedding, of course to a guy who’s best friends with the same two men that made her life a challenge years ago.  Those two guys, Leo and Oscar of course are at the wedding and this forces the situation a bit more since there’s so much uncertainty from when they parted ways all those years ago.

The question that we ask ourselves throughout this story is whether she’s able to make a decision and who she chooses – and then what that means for the triangle.  Will she turn friend against friend or will there be a way to make this threesome work as it often does in this genre.  I think that we’re pleasantly surprised yet we completely expected the outcome that it’s an interesting read.

To be honest though, there’s something about the style of writing that kept throwing me off.  It was almost as though English was not the language that this story was originally written in since there are often times when the conversations seem a bit uncomfortable in grammar and phrasing.  And i feel like there are words and sentiments that just didn’t work as they should in conversation since it felt like it was a translation.  I think that had the editing been a bit smoother, then the story would have flowed just a bit better and i would have liked this all.  It’s a good direction for a story, but there’s that one bit that kept it from being something ‘great’.  Oh well.  Have a good night all!