Ami's Hoard

Evan Pak meets Riley Flood in one of those meet-cute/one-off chance situation. Evan is helping his older brother Tommy in a photo-shoot for Riley's newest cover album. Immediately, I fell for Evan's narrative voice. I always love snarky-rambling-when-nervous characters, and Evan fits that to a "T". I wasn't really sure of Riley at first though -- since the story was written solely from Evan's perspective, Riley came as a bit mysterious, a bit arrogant, and totally unpredictable, even until the very end.

After the photo-shoot -- where somehow Evan was roped into being part of the cover, naked -- Evan and Riley spent the weekend together. I also admit that I didn't know what to think about this at first. I mean, it sounded like a set-up for another instant-love (though, thankfully, it wasn't filled with pages and pages of sex scenes)

.... until ...

This might be silly for other readers, but you want to know what changed my view towards this story? The part where Evan took Riley to watch the movie Pretty Woman. Suddenly, I felt nostalgic, and I read this part in whole different attitude. Imagine these two, in that short intimate weekend situation, in which they had sex, watched a classic, played video games, went bowling ... it felt romantic and almost fairy-tale like. My dreamy side took over completely.

So yes, when we get to the third part, where there was the reunion, I was completely in love with it.

A little dreamy. A little melancholy. A fair dose of sexy. A lot of heart. A whole lot of goodness. I got all emotional and choked up by the end.

PS: Some reviewers mentioned the past/present tense switch -- but since I am not an English native speaker, I never understand the difference between them anyway, so I wasn't bothered with it. For those of you who are sensitive about this, proceeds with caution.