Ally Hughes has Sex Sometimes by Jules Moulin
It sounded like a fun read at first, but turned into a blob of confusion.
Ally Hughes is a 41 year old single mom to Lizzie, a wannabe actress. Lizzie has just scored a very minor part in a movie and wants to date the film's leading man, Noah Bean. There's only one catch. Noah had a weekend fling with Ally a decade earlier, unbeknownst to Lizzie.
Lizzie has tried everything imaginable to get Noah's attention and one night suggests they go to Ally's for dinner. He agrees and when she introduces the two, Ally hopes that he doesn't remember her. The truth of the matter is, he does and has been in love with her for many years.
It's a simple enough plot, but, at the same time, there's a running flashback to the weekend of the fling. That in itself shouldn't be an issue, but Ally knows Noah as Jake, her former student. Throughout the book (except for the flashback) he is either known as Noah and when an unnumbered chapter comes up he's back to being Jake. It gets confusing when Ally refers to him as Jake at the ending of one unnumbered chapter (in the present) and then to Jake in the past.
I also didn't think Ally was described well.
Even though she's supposed to be a forty one year old professor, I kept envisioning her as a sixty year old in a muumuu, glasses and a long gray braid hanging down her back. She just didn't come across the way I had expected.
I also had the same problem with Noah/Jake as he's ten years younger but came across as much older. There didn't seem to be any chemistry between the two of them, except a wild fling.
The ending didn't leave me satisfied and I sort of felt violated!
There was a lot of potential for something good to come from the story but it falls flat.
The characters really weren't developed enough and for those that were strong minor characters they were kind of left hanging. It would have been great to see their stories woven into the main storyline but it doesn't happen. Even their stories leave the reader in limbo.