Leslie Hooton

Before Anyone Else follows Bailey who, for being an interior designers for upscale restaurant, is not nearly as good at designing her own life. Follow her across New York's glamorous culinary landscape as she experiences a shocking betrayal that changes her life forever.

Before Anyone Else

Ashley

Thank you to Turner Publishing and author Leslie Hooton for the ARC of Before Anyone Else. 

I think this book got better as it went along. I enjoyed Bailey's story, her growth, her blossoming into the woman she became by the end of the book. But I also had some issues with it. 

The fact that Bailey refers to her father as only "Daddy" throughout the entirety of the book was kind of hard to swallow. I understand the cultural aspect that played a part here. But all the same, I struggled, especially in the beginning, to not be completely put off to the point of laying down the book each time she called him Daddy instead of saying something like "my dad" or "my father." 

The development of Elliott as a character was also where I found this novel lacking. I didn't care about him as much and maybe that was intentional on the author's side. But when his Big Reveal happened, it wasn't so much shocking or devastating as it was a moment of "good, get him out of the way." I appreciated the real-life struggles that each of the characters face, even to the point of Bailey getting married so impulsively given that she's only in her mid to late twenties. Someone breaks your heart, you dive head first into someone else as a way of coping. But that emotional shortfall really juxtaposed with her business savvy and it almost made me want to shake her because she should be smarter than this, shouldn't she?

There were also some big moments that I wish would have been focused on a bit more, while other moments could have been left vague.

All that being said? I enjoyed this book after about the first third. After I got used to her calling her dad "Daddy" every time and the constant references to punctuation marks and commas and prepositional phrases. I liked Bailey as a person. I loved the men in her life. I loved the environment and the attention to detail about her surroundings. I felt her ups and downs. The writing could have used some work. The repetitiveness of certain phrases could have been toned down. But the vibe of the story was there. It was colorful and hopeful and light-hearted. It was a story of new beginnings and second-chances. 

It was good.

Before Anyone Else

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