J.A. Redmerski: The Edge of Never

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Well written contemporary romance
Contemporary romance is not my normal genre (I'm normally into fast action thrillers) but from time to time I have a break and read something lighter. In some ways this was lighter, but not really because both characters had a lot of bad history to face up to.

At only 20 years Cam has faced serious depression from family problems, the death of the her much loved boy friend and a breakup with her long-time best girl friend. She tries to escape to nowhere to find herself. I really liked her choice of nowhere - when buying a bus ticket she sees the ticket seller is eating a baked potato and decides to go to Ohio, the home of potatoes.

Andrew is taking the bus to his dying father's bedside so that he can have time to work out how he feels about life. He meets and protects Cam and without knowing it they gradually come together as a couple and decide to travel to nowhere together. Andrew tells her "Live in the moment, where everything is just right, take your time and limit your bad memories and you'll get wherever it is a lot faster..." Little do they know how true this is.

There is strong sexual tension between them which takes time to release as both of them are slow to commit to the inevitable. The steamy parts are well written, but are only part of the journey. The finale hits hard with an unexpected twist in the tale.

Overall I found the book took some time to get moving and was a bit too long because of unnecessary digressions into contemporary rock music. I find this book hard to rate because I can't really associate with the culture as I don't live in the US and have little appreciation of contemporary rock music having grown up in the 1950's and 60's. The first part of the book was slow and the descriptions of contemporary music were completely foreign to me. But I could see why the book has been enjoyed by the younger-set, especially from the US, so was not harsh in my rating because I couldn't completely empathise with the characters.

Personally I would give this a 3 star rating but have raised it to 4 star because because it is well written and that is how most of the audience out there would have judged it.