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California Living

by Miss Dodger Blue (link)

Genre drama, romance
Pairings Isaac/OFC, Taylor/OFC, Zac/OFC
Length prologue, 32 chapters, epilogue
Status Completed (sequel to Oklahoma Living)

As ambivalent as I felt about the first story in this series, Oklahoma Living, I wasn’t very hopeful for this one to impress me much. I found myself pleasantly surprised… and then bitterly disappointed.

The characters were basically the same, although they were thrown into a few different situations. I can’t say that there was much actual character growth, but I did come to feel a little more for them than I did in the first story. That’s not to say that they — especially the narrator Trish — don’t say and do stupid things, but I found myself more emotionally invested this time around, for whatever reason.

In fact, I found that I enjoyed California Living a lot more than Oklahoma Living. Which is why I was so disappointed by the ending. I expected it to be a little abrupt, due to the note at the beginning, explaining that the author had decided to stop writing it and post the epilogue. That could have been pulled off well, but instead, there was little explanation at all about what happened in the gap between the last chapter and the epilogue.

I understand that it’s difficult to end a story you’ve fallen out of love with over the course of a few years. I don’t mean to belittle the struggle that Miss Dodger Blue must have gone through. I just feel that she could have done a much better job providing a satisfying ending, since she obviously did at least try to provide some ending.

Review by Bethany (website)