11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Billion Reasons Why Not, March 11, 2011
This review is from: A Billion Reasons Why (Paperback)
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Eight years ago Katie McKenna was publicly rejected and humiliated by her then boyfriend Luc DeForges. Now, all these years later Luc has unexpectedly come back into her life and coerced her to come back to New Orleans to sing in his brother's wedding. Katie clearly still has feelings for Luc which complicates things with her fiance Dexter.
I really wanted to like this book. I considered giving it 3 stars just because I like Kristin Billerbeck's previous books so much. Unfortunately, try as I might, I couldn't. My main problem with this book is the characters, I found that I didn't care for them. I was not invested in them in the least bit. First, we have Katie who is a special needs teacher with an obsession with all things from the 1940's. I found this love of the 40's a tad overdone, and I am a huge fan of Cary Grant and movies from this era. There was a great mystery surrounding what had happened to Katie all those years ago to make her stay in California. When the reader is finally told I was a little more annoyed with Katie, after all these years it seemed to me she should have realized that perhaps the way she proposed to Luc was a bit inappropriate and out of the blue and that she should have given him a chance to explain. The time and place was Luc's college graduation party surrounded by guests, most of whom looked on Katie as a charity case. If I had known a bit more about Katie and Luc's relationship maybe it wouldn't have seemed so, well, ridiculous. Second, we have multimillionaire Luc who comes off as a pretty cocky man who thinks he knows what Katie really wants and needs. The author never really gave a clear picture of Luc, in my opinion, not enough for me to root for him. But by far my least favorite character was Eileen, Katie's best friend. Eileen was very pushy and critical of Katie, making her question her feelings and decisions at every turn. The only two characters I liked were Katie's mother and stepfather, they seemed to genuinely care for Katie and wanted to see her happy. Two nitpicky annoyances, the oft repeated use of the phrase "a billion reasons why." I expect to hear the title over and over in a song but found it a bit strange in a book. It seemed to me that the characters knew that they were in a book and were reminding us constantly of the title. Also, the cover of this book did not at all reflect the characters. Why choose a dark haired girl for Katie when she is referred to quite a number of times as having strawberry blonde hair?
While I cannot recommend this book I do recommend Ms. Billerbeck's previous work.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A puzzle with no satisfactory solution, April 6, 2011
This review is from: A Billion Reasons Why (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Eight years ago, Katie McKenna fled New Orleans with her broken heart. Believing she has finally repaired that heart she has found fulfillment in her chosen career of teaching special needs kids and Dexter, her soon to be fiancé. Or so she thought. Luc DeForges enters Katie's life once again looking for her to return to New Orleans as his date to his brother's wedding. He wants her to sing and dance at the 40's themed wedding and show the town that she is past her public humiliation eight years previous.
The synopsis of this book made it sound so romantic and charming. However, I found myself getting lost in several passages. Things didn't seem to flow right the actions seemed choppy and didn't make a lot of sense and I couldn't seem to get a true grasp on any of the characters. For instance, one character acts as though they saw a shared kiss/moment but they weren't even present. Luc acts as though his mother would be proud to know Katie yet his mother was the one screaming at Katie all those years ago. Katie's mother tells her that Mrs. DeForges is not nice but you don't really get that feeling from Luc, yet you do later and you get it from Katie's mother as well as from Katie.
I didn't know which characters to trust and I'm not sure they did either. They seemed to flip flop and change with the wind. I'm still trying to figure out how the stranger at the store could make that random comment about Katie's father when she barely spoke to Katie let alone knew anything about Katie's father.
Some of my biggest obstacles were:
That Luc didn't really seem to know Katie so how could he claim to have loved her all those years? She seemed to enjoy teaching and that was what she had planned to do all those years ago. The singing and dancing was just to help pay her way through school, yet Luc acts as though her choices gave her a "colorless existence."
I understood that Luc had his reasons for not acquiescing eight years earlier, but he couldn't have attempted to explain anything in all that time?
Why did he stay away for so long and what exactly was he up to? He couldn't have been building his wealth for her because she is not materialistic but his mother is!
I gathered that he sent Katie cards for Christmas to keep her up-to-date about his life, yet she said she hadn't heard from him in three years.
If Katie truly loved Luc then wouldn't she trust him? Yet even she believed the press and tabloids about his playboy ways. He thought she wouldn't believe them even though a few minutes before her comments indicated that she did and she believed them from their initial meeting at the beginning of the story. Later she says, "Eight years and two hundred blondes or so just slipped by." To which he tells her to look him in the eyes and tell him what she believes to be true about him. Of course she does, but her thoughts don't answer him. So I didn't see the point of that.
When conversations were started and I truly felt like explanations would be made, someone would inevitably interrupt and nothing was ever explained. It got to be very frustrating. However, I tend to believe that her mother had it right when she said a couple of times during the course of the story, "There's men who are charming and then there's men you marry. Luc ain't the marrying kind." Her mother claimed that Luc is about himself. It sounds like he is about himself when Katie asks him, "If you wanted to marry me, you had eight years to make it happen. Why would you wait until I was engaged to another man? You just wanted to win!" Of course he wonders what he has won and believes he has lost her instead. The man had eight years to correct a wrong and I'm still not sure why it took him that long. I didn't see how his pride was ever affected just hers.
*******POSSIBLE SPOILERS****** The icing on this proverbial cake takes place towards the end. Katie runs away and Luc calls for her, but she doesn't respond to him and ends up running into a post. She is out cold! Do you think Luc sticks around to see if she is okay? Nope, instead he "had an emergency." Seriously? He claims to love her so much, she runs into a post and is out cold and he has an emergency? When she comes to her friend claims that she is getting married to Luc. I swear I must have missed her accepting the proposal! I went back and reread that portion several times and I did NOT see her accepting the proposal.
I wish that I could recommend this book because it started out with such promise, but I felt like I was involved in some sort of puzzle that had no real, satisfactory solution, at least not for me.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not my cup of tea, February 3, 2011
This review is from: A Billion Reasons Why (Paperback)
When i first saw the front cover of the book..i brought it thinking it would be a good read.. For the life of me I could not get into the book...mainly because soo many other books are out there that i have read with the same plot.. rich guys..goes for poorer girls.. have a fight and get married..
I couldn't understand the characters.. they seems to bore me... the setting was just as bad.. and the whole swing 40's era thing just didn't seem to fit soo well.
Hopefully Kristins next book will be far more better and interesting then this one.
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