UnstickyWorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder
This book just wasn’t for me. I seriously disliked both main characters. The book was unnecessarily long and I thought the ending didn’t really show any growth or serious resolution.
First, as always, the synopsis courtesy of GoodReads.com:
High fashion, high art, high expectations – this is Pretty Woman for the twenty-first century Money makes the world go round – that’s what twenty-something Grace Reeves is learning. Stuck in a grind where everyone’s ahead apart from her, she’s partied out, disillusioned, and massively in debt. If she’s dumped by another rock-band wannabe, squashed by anyone else at her cut-throat fashion job, or chased by any more bailiffs, Grace suspects she’ll fall apart…
So when older, sexy and above all, wealthy art-dealer Vaughn appears, she’s intrigued against her will. Could she handle being a sugar daddy’s arm candy?
Soon Grace is thrown into a world of money and privilege, at Vaughn’s beck and call in return for thousands of pounds in luxurious gifts, priceless clothes – and cash. Where’s the line between acting the trophy girlfriend, and selling yourself for money?
And, more importantly: whatever happened to love?
There you go… Unsticky is about a wealthy art dealer who cares more about making money than pretty much anything else (with the exception of sugary desserts). And it’s about a girl with a lot of credit card debt and crappy money management. They meet. They get into a contractual relationship (very 50 Shades esque without the BDSM), and Vaughn is a huge ass to her, and Grace just takes it because she obviously has no self respect.
Grace said she was doing it for the money… which was totally believable but as soon as she started spending most of her money on ‘necessary’ outfits for her dates with Vaughn, she wasn’t using any of it for her debts, which led me to wonder why the hell she was dating the ass in the first place. Grace really didn’t appear to have genuine feelings for him and, at best, she was mildly interested in him. I mean, WHY do it?
She states on numerous occasions that Vaughn wasn’t exactly the best looking man. He’s what… 41? 43? I can’t remember. But she’s only 23. Aside from his wealth… he doesn’t offer much to Grace besides a condescending attitude and a whole lot of bossiness.
Yes, eventually they start to somewhat care for each other but it just wasn’t enough for my liking. I could see how they could grow fond of one another after spending so much time together but I feel like it was a relationship that would eventually turn extremely bad and end with them breaking up.
SPOILERS AHEAD
.
.
Towards the end, the contract runs out and they go their separate ways because Vaughn is too wrapped up in having a specific end date and having everything under contract. I wish they would’ve stayed apart but, alas, this is a romantic-sort of novel and things just have to work out. They end up back together. Grace draws up a prenup and it clearly states that she wants none of his money if they should part. And before their happy little ending, Vaughn makes sure to cross out the paragraph involving money from the prenup. How romantic. Not.
They were the SAME CRAPPY COUPLE at the end. This book was all about romanticizing a crappy abusive relationship. There were more than a few occasions when Vaughn had his hands on Grace. It wasn’t romantic. The characters where annoying and they lacked any real change. If I wanted a story about how people stay in a crap relationship and never outgrow their lacking personalities… I would watch reality television.
I always feel bad being so negative about a book… so I am happy to report that I managed to read a second book by author, Sarra Manning, over the weekend and I will have a much more positive review about that one. Stay tuned for my review of “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me” later this week.
-Whoa, almost forgot to mention the sex scenes. They weren’t all that. Maybe I’m a little jaded because I disliked the characters so much. They weren’t extremely descriptive but the book was certainly meant for adults. They didn’t just elude to sex… the author made sure to give a little bit of description with each encounter. But there wasn’t real emotional ties between the characters so it was hard to have any sort of pleasant thoughts when they were being intimate. If anything, I was uncomfortable. Really really uncomfortable.
Have you read Unsticky? What were your thoughts?
