by Akimbie (link)
Genre slash/cest, drama/angst, romance
Pairings Isaac/OFC, Taylor/OMC, Zac/OMC, Zaylor
Length prologue and 6 chapters
Status Unfinished (sequel to On My Own)
When I re-read On My Own (having read at least a few chapters of it a long, long time ago), I’ll admit I wasn’t terribly impressed. Within just a few sentences, it’s clear that Akimbie’s writing had come a long way by the time she began Pretending He’s Beside Me, which makes it especially sad to know that it never really received a proper ending.
Unlike On My Own (and the rest of this story), the prologue is a short first person interlude from Zac’s point of view. The first chapter is a little dry, packed with all sorts of details to fill in the gap between the first story and this one. The writing, however, is already miles ahead of On My Own, so I don’t mind much having a lot of exposition dropped on me. From there on, the writing improves greatly, only occasionally falling back on the problems that plagued On My Own. There are still a few fairly awkward, to me, sex scenes and some occasionally confusing dialogue, but the problems are minimal.
Akimbie stopped writing Pretending He’s Beside Me at a big pivotal point, but luckily, she did provide a summary of the rest of the plot. Just reading it all takes my breath away. Although it seems like chapter six is the climax, there was still a lot of back and forth left before Zac and Taylor could find their happy ending. Even if it is only in a bullet pointed summary, I’m glad they did.
Review by Bethany (website)