Book Review: Titans by Leila Meacham

I’d like to start off this review by saying that I was definitely stepping out of my comfort zone when it comes to the kind of books that I usually like to read by reading Titans by Leila Meacham. However, the plot description that’s on the cover of the book made it sound really interesting to me, which is why I decided to a copy of Titans and read it. When I first started reading Titans, I absolutely loved the book, which really surprised me given the fact that I usually prefer to read books that are set in modern times. However, one exception to that would be books that are a part of the science fiction genre, and in that case, I love it when the plot of the book takes place in a futuristic setting; that being said, here are my thoughts on Titans.

Part of what originally made Titans sound so appealing to me was the fact that the plot of the book revolved primarily around the characters, Samantha Gordon and Nathan Holloway, who are twins that were separated at birth. Their lives eventually start to collide with one another’s years later when they’re adults, which naturally creates some major drama between a lot of the characters in the book. Leila Meacham’s writing for Titans got me completely invested in both Samantha and Nathan as characters, and the plot of the book right from the beginning. It also helped that I felt like the plot moved at a really good pace, at least at the beginning of the book. However the book definitely starts having some issues with the overall pacing of the plot beginning with chapter thirty-one, which I’ll talk about more later on in this review.

While I really liked both Samantha and Nathan as characters, Nathan was definitely my favorite character in the book. I definitely enjoyed the chapters that focused on Nathan the most. One thing that I liked about both Samantha and Nathan is that they were both smart in their own way. Samantha came across as being very book smart, especially when it comes to her interest in dinosaurs and paleontology, whereas Nathan seemed to be smart in more of a street-smart sense, for lack of a better description. I think it’s definitely a good thing that Nathan wasn’t afraid to question the actions and intentions of others, especially when it came to his and Samantha’s biological father, Trevor Waverling. While I don’t think that Nathan is a gullible person, I do think that Samantha should have been a little smarter and more assertive at times.

Admittedly, it has been a few weeks since I finished reading Titans, and while I originally really liked Samantha for the most part, the more I’ve thought about how I feel about Samantha as a character, the more I realize that she’s an incredibly frustrating character in some ways. Don’t get me wrong, I do like Samantha, but she still really annoyed me at times throughout the book. For starters, Samantha is unfortunately way too passive for her own good. For example, after Neal secretly reads the letter that was sent to Samantha regarding her looking for information about her birth parents, he started acting rather cold and distant towards her for two months. During that time, Samantha spends a lot of time wondering what’s going on with Neal and is confused about why he was acting so weird towards her; but rather than actually confronting him about his behavior, she basically just sits around on her ass wondering why he’s acting so cold and distant towards her. When Neal eventually starts acting like he normally does towards her, she never asks him what was going on with him, she’s just happy that things between them have gone back to normal. 

Everywhere and Every Way: There’s nothing quite like heaps of family drama and some romance to make a good book (My thoughts on Book #1 in the Billionaire Builders series by Jennifer Probst)

I’d like to start off this review by saying that despite the fact that Jennifer Probst is an author who has been on my radar for years, Everywhere and Every Way is actually the first book by Probst that I’ve ever read. I decided to finally check out Jennifer Probst’s books after I saw a tweet that Emma Chase had retweeted on Twitter, which included a link to a list of books that are available to purchase from the iTunes store that Jennifer Probst had recommended people read, with Emma Chase’s first book, Tangled, being on the list. That got me thinking about how I had been interested in checking out Jennifer Probst’s books for quite a few years now. For the record, I’m pretty sure that I had come across Probst’s books long before I even discovered Emma Chase’s Tangled series back in 2014, but Emma Chase ultimately played a big part in convincing me to finally take the plunge and read one of Jennifer Probst’s books. Originally, I was planning to read The Marriage Bargain first, and I even bought the audiobook version of The Marriage Bargain, but I ultimately decided to read and review Everywhere and Every Way first instead since this is Probst’s latest book; that being said, here are my thoughts on Everywhere and Every Way.

Right off the bat, I have to say that much like Emma Chase’s Tangled and Legal Briefs series, as well as Christina Lauren’s book Beautiful Bastard have all exceeded the expectations that I usually have for the romance genre, Everywhere and Every Way also exceeded the expectations that I usually have for the genre. If I’m being honest, while I truly believe that Emma Chase and Christina Lauren have definitely both raised the bar in terms of what I expect from a good romance novel; in some ways, I feel like Jennifer Probst managed to exceed some of those expectations when it comes to the writing for this book.

Having recently read and reviewed the book Winter by Marissa Meyer, which is definitely a book that I personally think has a lot of issues with the overall pacing of the plot moving too slow for somewhat large chunks of the book, and the fact that that book is slightly over 800 pages long didn’t help those issues; one thing that I really thought Jennifer Probst did a great job of in terms of the writing for Everywhere and Every Way, is that the overall pacing of the plot moved at the perfect pace for the most part. While I think that having certain parts of any book be very exposition heavy can subsequently cause the plot of a book to feel like it’s being bogged down, and moving too slow; Probst definitely did a great job of handling exposition throughout the book when she needed to. I thought that was especially the case at the beginning of the book, when she was establishing the overall premise of the book, without it feeling like the plot of the book was moving too slow.