Reviewed by Cinnamon

TITLE: The Bucket List

SERIES: LoLLA Book 1 (Lots of Love, Low Angst)

AUTHOR: Tricia Owens

PUBLISHER: self published

LENGTH: 110 pages

RELEASE DATE: November 10, 2016

BLURB:

When Quinn nearly dies in a skydiving incident, his life flashes before his eyes…and it’s pretty boring. Though he’s moved to Las Vegas to rebel against his strict Mormon upbringing, he still hasn’t done much to liven up his life. He’s far too comfortable with his boring routine. After the accident, however, he vows to change this. He draws up a bucket list with all the best intentions, yet somehow nothing changes. Quinn worries that he really is a dud, until a gorgeous man walks up to him and suggests an indecent proposal.

Gabriel has had a lot of sex. He’s fantastic at it and he’s good-looking, so he never lacks for people willing to jump into bed with him. But after a rough break-up, he’s determined to make hooking up a secondary priority. It’s too bad that when he first sees Quinn and his heart goes pitter-patter, Gabriel’s first instinct is to make a bet with Quinn involving sex.

With one spin of the roulette wheel, Gabriel and Quinn embark on a series of sexually adventurous dares, each more exciting than the last. But what happens when one of them pushes for something more? LoLLA books are standalone novellas with lots of love/sex, low angst, and a Happily Ever After ending for a quick dose of happiness.

REVIEW:

The Bucket List is the first book in the author’s LoLLA series, which stands for Lots of Love, Low Angst, my favorite type of story, and Tricia Owens delivers her promise. We get sweet love and probably no angst at all, except a bit (or a lot) of frustration.

We meet Quinn, who is a twenty-three year old sweet boy, raised in a strict Mormon family, looking for some adventures to spice up his average, everyday life. He works as a dealer at a casino in Las Vegas where he had moved after leaving his family behind. He meets Gabriel while working one of his shifts. Gabriel is a few years older, and as we get to know him a bit later in the story, is quite mysterious at the beginning.

The story is told from double third person POVs but we get Quinn’s point of view in the first half of the book and Gabriel’s the second half. I’m not sure this was the best way to do it as lots of information gets lost as we could only see half of the POVs. I miss the part where we could see what first attracted Gabriel to Quinn. The first half of the book was just so awkward and confusing that I couldn’t connect to any of the characters. When we started reading Gabriel’s POV, the story started to make sense and I finally understood his motivation as well. The story came together at the end and the upside down structure we have here might work for many readers. The writing is solid, the characters are likable, but unfortunately this disconnected feeling in me stayed along the way and their chemistry just didn’t come through for me up until the last few chapters. When all miscommunication was cleared, I finally enjoyed their connection, and the epilogue was just a sweet cherry on top.

RATING:

BUY LINK: 

Amazon