Out of Focus

by Becky Harmon

My Rating: 2 of 5 stars

TJ Smith, a wildlife officer, and Bailey Everett, professional photography, meet under less than polite circumstances while Bailey is taking wildlife photos for her next book. An undeniable spark keeps them orbiting each other as they try to figure out how they can fit into each other’s lives.

I have mixed feelings about this book. The concept is great and I liked the characters themselves, but the execution of the story didn’t do it for me. Bailey was very aloof about relationships with good reason. It made sense that traveling so much for work would keep her from even bothering with one. TJ also has similar reservations and again this makes sense. It’s a bit of a small town vibe and she prefers to keep her private life private in addition to feeling like she always needs to prove her worth. Again I felt like these were great characters

The actual narrative felt a little weak. The plot keeps pushing forward with several awkward misunderstandings that don’t honestly feel all that believable. The interactions and conversation. between the two main characters don’t flow well. This surprisingly doesn’t feel the same when a secondary character is involved. The secondary characters are well written and have natural feeling dialog whether it’s with the main characters or other secondary ones. I found I actually enjoyed them quite a bit. It was also very clear that the author did a lot of research on the natural wildlife of Florida. However, this became a problem as there was just too much information presented. This felt fine when characters would be speaking to each other as Bailey needed as much information as she could get for her book, but felt silly when TJ would be having an inner monologue. She would provide so much information that just wasn’t needed.

The ending was by far my biggest disappointment. It was incredibly abrupt and didn’t feel like Bailey and TJ had any actual resolution. I genuinely feel like this is one of those times the narrative would have really benefited from an epilogue of some nature.

Overall this was a bit disappointing but had some very likable characters.


Order it now from:

Bookshop.org

All Bookshop links support my local indie bookstore. I am not an affiliate and get no payment from sales.

Leave a comment

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑