Epilogue would have been nice ( )

Epilogue would have been nice ( )

Nell Frost thought she was doing the right thing by confronting Luiz Santoro at his grandmother's home with the intention of rescuing her niece from marrying too young, but it turned out she got the wrong man. Luiz had an idea where her niece might be and decided to help Nell if she'd agree to pretend to be his fiancée to make his grandmother's final days happy.

From there they went on a little goose chase across the large estate, only to be stranded when the car ran out of gas and they had to camp outside. They got to their destination the next day, but they were too late as Nell's niece was already on her way home, leaving Luiz's younger cousin—who was also named Luiz Santaro—heartbroken.

With the short timeline and equally short chapters, this book breezed by really fast. Before I knew it, the book was more than two-thirds of the way through and only twenty-four hours have passed in the story! I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but it didn't work well in this case. The pacing probably would have been less awkward had the book been longer, instead of the rushed ending with Luiz's confession of love seemingly out of nowhere.

Then there were the plot holes... In the beginning of the book, Luiz was mentioned being weak and sickly as a child, but I don't see what purpose that brought into the story except as a lame excuse of a reason for Luiz's parents to dump their child to the grandmother. I also had a similar problem with why Luiz needed Nell to be a temporary fiancée since the grandmother doesn't play any important role in the story.

Throughout the book, Luiz felt guilty having feelings for something other than his late wife, Rosa. I wished there was more about Rosa and Luiz together as a couple. I wasn't at all convinced that Rosa really made that much of an impact in Luiz's life.

And really, why write about Nell taking extra care to not wake up her sleeping nephew when in the next instance, Luiz showed up and they were having an argument?

Though honestly, this wasn't an entirely bad read. It just could have been better. ( )