Reviewed by Jess
TITLE: Coast to Coast
AUTHOR: Nanisi Barrett D’Arnuk
PUBLISHER: JMS Books
LENGTH: 32 pages
RELEASE DATE: June 9, 2018
BLURB:
Long-time loner and party girl Marty Pendleton has finally fallen in love. The problem: Marty lives in Seattle, and her new girlfriend Taylor lives in Boston. Her best friend Elaine and her brother Sean are worried that, as usual, Marty will blow it.
Taylor is everything Marty could want in a woman: sexy, confident, and successful. But how will Taylor handle Marty’s penchant for over-reacting and drinking a bit too much?
When Marty makes assumptions, she risks losing everything. Can she convince Taylor she’ll change for the better and make this work, even long-distance?
REVIEW:
This feels more like an outline to a great romance rather than a good story in and of itself.
Told through the eyes of player Marty’s best friend Elaine, we see Marty’s personality change as she ditches her party-girl ways and falls deeply for Taylor, a woman who lives across the country. Long-distance romances can be fun, sexy, and rife with tension, but since this is all told through another character’s point of view, we don’t actually see the relationship. We just see Elaine’s reactions to Marty’s changing persona. It just isn’t enough to make me invested in Marty and Taylor.
The best parts of this short story were the bits between Elaine, Marty, and Marty’s gay brother Sean. There’s such a fun, humorous feeling of camaraderie between gay friends and family, full of inside jokes and playful teasing. In so few words, we can tell how close they all are and how they have a rich history of supporting and putting up with each other’s antics.
But on the romance front, the story never gains momentum. It doesn’t help much that we don’t actually meet Taylor until the very end. I was expecting some kind of plot twist regarding her character since she had been left in the shadows for so long, but instead, the story hinged on a really silly miscommunication plot device. We only get Marty’s side of things—her feelings, her actions, her devotion to Taylor. And even those are through Elaine’s lens, not Marty’s own.
Despite some fun bits of friendship and dialogue, there just isn’t enough substance here for a really great love story.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS: