Review: One Night Promised by Jodi Ellen Malpas

Title: One Night Promised (One Night #1)
Author: Jodi Ellen Malpas
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Publication date: July 17th 2014
Buy the book: Amazon / Barnes and Noble



Livy notices him the moment he walks into the coffee shop. He's heart-stoppingly stunning, with a blue-eyed gaze so piercing she's almost too distracted to take his order. When he walks out the door, she thinks she'll never see him again. Then she finds the note he left on his napkin . . . signed M.

All he wants is one night to worship her. No feelings, no commitment, nothing but pleasure. Every defense mechanism Livy has adopted during her solitary life is at risk of being obliterated by this confounding man. He's obnoxious but well-mannered. He's a gentleman but aloof. He's passionate but emotionless. Yet the fascination is so powerful, Livy can't deny him... or herself.

M awakens something in Livy, something deep and addictive that she never knew existed -- and that she fears only he can satisfy. But she senses that behind the fast cars, fancy suits, and posh apartment, he's aching inside. To have him, body and soul, she'll have to brave his dark secrets. Delving into his world and breaking down his defenses become her obsession - an obsession that could shatter her heart beyond repair.

(Image and summary taken from Goodreads.)

Review:

You know that moment when you are eagerly anticipating a new release from one of the authors you absolutely adore but upon cracking that new book open and reading all 400+ pages of it you realize how much you did not like it and were just forcing yourself to read it all? Well, that was what it was like for me. While I may have enjoyed Jodi Ellen Malpas' This Man trilogy, One Night Promised was definitely not for me. One Night Promised had a pretty strong start, the prologue was enough to keep me reading and had me asking a lot of questions, but as the story went on, pretty much everything crashed and burned, in my opinion.

First let us talk about the protagonist, Livy, a beautiful girl who lives with her grandmother, works at a coffee shop and has a fabulously gay best friend but oh my goodness, please, just stop. More than half of the book was her saying "no" to "M" and then giving in after 5 seconds of denying him. She was so childish and I pretty much wanted to smack her all the time. BUT Malpas tried to redeem Livy by giving her a really sordid and crazy background that did not have its desired effect on me but might have worked for other people (the shock effect was just not there). Just warning you, her "secret" was really predictable. Sigh.

Next, onto the mysterious "M", who does not even stay mysterious, at all. You will be given his name about forty pages into the book (and trust me, it is not a sexy name). I have never been so creeped out and annoyed at a potential book boyfriend before. Let me list the things that turned me off about "M":

1. He gave off stalker vibes and not in an attractive way. No matter how hot you are and no matter how much you like someone, you never follow someone around like that or badger them. If it were me, I would have had a restraining order put on his crazyass but here is the crazy part, it was kind of like Livy liked it. Maybe some girls are into that but just, no.
2. He just can not take a "no". I have no idea how many times I have seen Livy tell him no but he was relentless. When a girl tells you "no", she means "no" no matter how much her body might seem to want you or whatever. Get it through your head, man.
3. His bluntness borders on offensive. I do not think I would ever be with a guy who tells me that he wants exactly 24 hours of my time just to rock my world. Nor would I ever be with a guy who talks to me the way "M" speaks to Livy. Sorry, I am not that easy. He was way too emotionally unattached as well. Like, hello, am I speaking to a Lego block or a person? I could not tell the difference.

Other than the very questionable characters in this book, I felt that One Night Promised was a bit to reminiscent of the This Man trilogy. If you changed the name of the characters into Eva and Jesse, it would be like reading the same series except in a different scenario. The love scenes were boring and very repetitive, the story went around in circles and the cast in general did not impress me.

I will say this: One Night Promised had one redeeming quality, its ending. It felt like Malpas' last ditch effort to save her book because maybe even she knew that it was not that good. The way Malpas ended it guaranteed that the reader will want to read the next one, and yes, that also applies to me. She managed to squeeze in one last bomb that even I did not expect and one that left me very curious. So I will reluctantly be waiting for the second book, I am certainly hoping that the next one will be better than its predecessor.

I really wish that I enjoyed this book more but I would be lying to everyone if I said that I liked it. And you will not see me recommending this to anyone anytime soon. Read at your own risk, I guess.

Rating: