Acapulco Nights
K.J. Gillenwater
Suzie’s current lover is pushing her to set a date for their marriage. The only thing stopping her is the fact that she is already married to a man in Mexico. When an old school friend is planning to go there, Suzie jumps at the chance to set things right, and move on with her life.
Romance. Romance, romance, romance. I forget that I generally don’t enjoy the ‘smoking’ sex scenes or powerful erections. I appreciated the differences between James and Joaquin’s love-making styles, but I wasn’t left asking for more. I read other great romances (Deep Blue) lately, and they just have an individual spark that makes them great. This novel attempted to keep me interested in Mexico, specifically Acapulco, but it just didn’t happen.
I struggled to finish this, and left it sitting on my bedside table, half read for more than a month. When I picked it back up again, I finished it off in half an hour. There just wasn’t enough substance for me in there.
Isn’t Suzie an adult? She is a complete and pathological liar. Poor Suzie, she has to choose between two smoking-hot men, and to do that, she has to insist on having a divorce from a mistimed earlier marriage. Excuse me for not feeling more sympathetic. If you can afford to live in a house by yourself and buy an overpriced coffee once a week, I’m pretty sure you could afford the trip to end the marriage yourself.
I didn’t find myself satisfied with the Mercedes-Suzie dynamic at the ending. I also couldn’t have cared less about who she ended up with. James might be a soft-touch, but I don’t think he’s blameless either, even if he isn’t the total user of Joaquin-standards. Perhaps I would have enjoyed reading it from different perspectives instead.
Didn’t love it. Unless you have a thing for Mexico and love triangles, don’t worry about reading it.
I could hardly put this novel down, which was surprising because its basically a memoir. I’ve never heard of her though, so it was all new to me. I did enjoy the ‘journey’ right from the beginning of her life.
Where can I start talking about this novel? It arrived, I spotted it, and next thing it was 2 hours later and I still couldn’t put it down. …yes I have problems with being attracted to new books. The pages grabbed me right from the beginning, pulled me in, and kept me reading because things could change at any moment. And of course, I love reading about the training of new and innovative skills.
As always, it can be dangerous reading a sequel of 
The blurb of the book suggests that “a letter. In Jenna’s handwriting. Along with a key.” is the most important driving force behind the novel. In fact though there is so much more to the story. The interactions of the characters and the flipping time periods do a much better job of exploring the story.
There are some interesting things going on in this novel. If you wait too long after reading something, you lose those things. It’s not that I’ve waited too long, its that I’ve read about 5 books in the mean time. Oops?
The twist in this novel is that you don’t know there is a twist. I’m really not sure how long Will’s situation has been the way it is, but you get the snap-shot of when things are really changing. Will is very skittish, but cute all the same. Julian is not cute. He’s just annoying and pushy and a great friend.
Most of us want to hope that we won’t fall for a Con. Who would get into a pyramid scheme? Hell, I was almost pulled into one as a kid, but it didn’t work in Australia because we don’t have $1 notes to post. The deal was that you post $1 to each person on the list, then you add your name to the bottom of the list. Then the more people you send it to, the more you make back. Now it costs a $1 to send the damn letter, so you wouldn’t even break even!
I’m not certain what kind of audience this book is aimed for. Maybe for a tween girl? Someone who just wants to dip into a book, be inspired, then come back out. It took me maybe 5 minutes to read it, and I wouldn’t see myself buying the book myself.
I feel like it is possible that this novel had too many themes crammed into it, but instead I felt like they all balanced themselves out. It read exactly like the protagonist was thinking and feeling. Ash struck me as so confused, and yet so cute. And don’t be put off by the ‘teacher crush’ thing. It’s not a big deal, its just used as a prop for forwarding Ash’s character development.