Review: The Perfect Date by Evelyn Lozada

ARC provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I should have googled the book before I started reading it. I have committed to stop reading reality tv/internet people books (without careful consideration), and I did not realize that following that rule could have saved me from this book. It’s not good. The cover is the cutest, but the book is almost unreadable.

The Perfect Date is about Angel, a single mother in nursing school trying to take care of her asthmatic son José. She meets the Duke, a pitcher for the Yankees with an ankle injury, past legal trouble, and some potential money problems and then romance apparently happens. I didn’t see it though.

The writing is so bad. If anyone wrote it without fame, it would never never never have been published. I would be embarrassed to be associated with this book. The writing is hard to follow; the point of view switches are terribly executed; it is hard to figure out who is doing what half the time. I thought Again, But Better was bad, but I hadn’t read this book yet.

The plot is so drama-laden it will most certainly make your eyes roll. The tragedy porn being dumped on the reader right at the beginning is so poorly done. People can most certainly have lives that are this terrible, but the way it’s just laid out for you right at the beginning is just bad plotting and character development. And as the book progresses, the drama gets more and more outlandish. How many times does someone need to walk in on sex in one book? And how long do you need to stare at two people banging before you figure out what’s happening and turn your ass around?!?

I hated the way this book talked about most women that weren’t our heroine, Angel. Everyone she worked with was “anorexic” and too skinny for our hero, the Duke, to want to bang. No other woman is shown to be smart, out heroin is a special woman because she has layers. It is bullshit that this kind of attitude about women is still being published in 2019. And it’s not like it’s a nuanced look at gender or how women are expected to behave. It’s just Angel is amazing; her neighbor/friend is fine; basically, all other women are terrible.

Our romantic lead is someone who approaches Angel and says, “I hear you take your shirt off for money,” and we are supposed to like him?!?? He has such terrible behavior throughout this book when interacting with Angel. I am so over aggression and bad behavior being presented as sexy.

Angel is all “I don’t need a man” but is also daydreaming about a man “taking care of her.” Which is super outdated also doesn’t match up with the author trying to convince us that Angel is smart and self-sufficient. I wish that the character development was better.

I gave this book one star on Goodreads, it is available for purchase right now if anyone wants to buy it.

So I recommend this book to no one. And if anyone has any actually cute romance recommendations, I would love to hear them.