Layla’s Gale
Nicole Pouchet
Layla has just landed what is almost a leading role in a paying job! But those erotic dreams she’s been having for months could be getting in the way of her responses to the director…
Layla seems like a bit of a wuss. For someone who knows how to act, she’s surprisingly see-though. She thinks she’s well put together, but her ex- seems like a real deadhead, and yet it took her a long time to get out of it. Is she just not very bright? She has to be, to remember scripts perhaps. I don’t know how to make it as an actress, but someone with more experience in the industry could perhaps reflect on the likelihood of this scenario.
This is a romance, yet at the same time, I felt like it was reaching, and not quite touching, to be something more. The myths throughout it could have been given more significance, even if the main players in the novel don’t believe in them. I wanted more substance, more linking to ‘history’.
The sex scenes in this did not ring true for me. You can only read about a ‘throbbing member’ a couple of times before it gets old. Other sex scenes have left me feeling like I’m being left out, these ones make me grateful I’m not in the novel. I usually expect more sex in a romance novel though, and I was glad there wasn’t too much.
I could have put down this book at any time in the first half, but started enjoying it more in the second half. The forward motion that needed to be set in from the beginning only happened in the end. It was inevitable, as you could hear the story from both Layla and Sebastian’s perspectives, that they would end up both happy in their own ways.
I appreciated that the author took empaths and put them in situations where their emotive abilities would be useful and harmful at the same time. It’s strangely appropriate that they work in a theatre – where projecting emotions is normal.
The mystery with this novel held well to my scrutiny. I wasn’t able to guess with certainty who the ‘bad guys’ were, and I remained surprised at the ending.
I don’t know how I feel about reading the next novel in the series. I don’t see how the 4 elementals coming together is essential to the world. Wouldn’t it be simpler if it just didn’t happen? The final scenes in this novel didn’t clear this up for me much either. Ah well, can’t have everything.
I received this novel from the author in exchange for a fair review. All opinions are my own.
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The beginning of this novel filled me with a little apprehension. I didn’t love the opening paragraphs, and didn’t immediately connect with the protagonist. A few pages in though, and I was hooked, not wanting to step away from my desk. I loved that Triinu developed as a character, entirely intertwined through the novel. There were no moments of uncertainty, where I wondered how the text had gotten to this point. This is marketed as a coming-of-age story, and I have to say it is.
There’s never really an explanation for Eleanor’s clothing choices. Is it something she does to annoy her step-father? I could not believe Eleanor’s mother. Why on earth would she put up with a guy like that? Where was the income even coming from? I know that domestic violence is something that is tangible and real, but also that there are safe-guards put in place, and that help is available.
They meet various people along the way, and each one seems like they have a story, a background, something important to add. Even as at the same time you want to fit them into stereotypes, you just can’t. We don’t see much character development in my opinion for the 3 girls. Bev seems just as mean, and although we hear about the major events in their lives, and how they affected their person in the past, we don’t see that development in the future/present.
