Becky Monson

Holly has a plan for everything. But she never could have planned for this. If there

Just a Name

Colleen

2.5 Stars
 
*A cute but unoriginal romance with a lack of actual traveling*


I have been seriously craving some armchair travel (since it looks like I won’t be doing any real travel any time soon). So Just a Name caught my eye. 

While the romance was cute enough, this book was a total flop in the vicarious travel department. It was over halfway through the book before Holly agreed to even go on vacation and two-thirds through before she after left on the trip. And even then, anything related to the travel happened off page. It was narrated in first person by Holly, and she tended to focus on drama stuff. Then she would casually recap the sites she had seen in little more than a bullet point list. There was absolutely nothing to bring any of the locations to life. In fact, that portion could have of the story could have been set in any city without it making any difference. 

The other problem I had with this story was its lack of originality. I thought at first that this book inspired the movie Non-transferrable. But when I looked it up, the movie came out before Just a Name and there was not any connection that I found. Yet both are about a type-A, workaholic Millennial redhead who books a romantic trip, gets dumped, then finds a guy with the same name to take the trip with instead. Other than the love interest, the two stories were way too similar. But Just a Name didn’t have anything to inspire wanderlust.

I liked the romance in Just a Name well enough, although Holly was an annoying narrator at times – and not just for the lack of descriptive travel. She was the type of character you want to shake some sense into. Her case was not helped by the audiobook narrator who read her lines in a nasally Valley Girl voice. Also, the attempts to make every conversation PG were too silly and juvenile. Seriously, how many times can a character say “What the H?” Just say hell. 

The story fulfilled the typical romance hallmarks and was cute enough, but the lack of vicarious travel combined with the other small annoyances really damped my enthusiasm for the story.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 4 Stars
Writing Style: 3 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 2 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 2 Stars
Level of Captivation: 3 Stars
Originality: 1 Star

Just a Name

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