Customer Reviews

Ordinary World

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Spoilers Alert. This review discusses the ending of the book. NOTE - Elisa Lorello has very thoughtfully responded to my concerns listed below in the first comment attached to the review. Please be sure to read her comment.
I loved Faking It, but I have very mixed feelings about Ordinary World. Something that was just a niggling concern as I read Faking It really began to annoy me in Ordinary World. I don't think that Devin/David was given a fair shake. Why is it that we would perceive a female who was driven to prostitution by an emotionally abusive parent as a victim, and the `johns' as abusing the situation, but we are so ready to cast the roles in the other direction if it is a male prostitute/'escort'.
Andi is in a world of hurt after her husband dies. She is justifiably self-centered and needy. She runs into her old flame Devin/David who still loves her and he tries to help her through the pain. She justifies her lack of emotional commitment to the relationship by the fact that `he did it to her before' - painting him as the aggressor rather than the victim in her earlier relationship with him. She deifies her former husband as `perfect' and refuses to acknowledge flaws in their relationship. In the end, she agrees to a relationship with Devin/David only because she can never have Sam again. She never once acknowledges any quality in which Devin/David (who is a pretty spectacular guy) is better than her former husband, except that he is alive. Even the last sentence - [Life with Sam was fabulous because Sam is fabulous, Life with Dev is ordinary] expresses that concept.
I know someone who feels that way about their current marriage after their first spouse died. It's wrong and unfair. If you can't look at your new husband and say that he is different, but fabulous in his own way, you don't deserve him, and you're not doing him any favors by being with him.
I so wish I were the editor of this. I would send this wonderful compelling book back and say - you didn't finish it. She's not there yet. Maybe there will be another to finish the story.

Like Andi, my husband was killed suddenly in a senseless accident, leaving me a young widow to cope alone. At the 70% point of this book, Andi has wallowed in her grief for two long years and I have suffered every minute with her. Not in a good way. Frankly, by about the 40-45% point in the book, my sympathy for and empathy with her was completely exhausted. Sadly, there is nothing in this character to like. She uses her friends, finally 'understands' but is still a jerk with her mother and her self-absorption knows no bounds. Grief is no excuse for two years of bad behavior. I rarely give up on a book ¾ of the way through, but I just plain do not care what happens to Andi. I have begun another book and likely will not be able to force myself to finish this one. Ever.

If you enjoy mucking about in vicarious grief, this is the right book. If you'd like to read something with even a glimmer of strength and self-reliance, look elsewhere.

I just finished Ordinary World. I was a fan of Faking it so I was looking forward to the sequel. Nothing could have prepared me for the powerful emotions I got from this book. I lost my wife last spring after a 6 month illness and I lived so many of the thoughts and emotions Andi was dealing with and I certainly could identify with what she was feeling. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one should read this book and so should anyone else. Ms Lorello really gets it. She has captured the experience of loss like no other author I have read.

I loved "Faking It," and I was even okay with Andi marrying Sam in the end. "Ordinary World" was a journey of mourning for Andi after Sam's passing, and I understand the enormous swing of emotions that one goes through when mourning. I just had a difficult time trying to keep up with those emotions and by the end of it (finding it difficult to even try to sympathize with her), was hoping that she would find her "Ordinary World" and end up with Dev/David. I was elated to find her meeting up with David/Devin again in Italy and was hoping that they would live happily ever after. I'm a sucker for happy endings and maybe that scenario would have been too neatly packaged, I don't know. All I know was the last 4 lines of the book ruined it all for me. I don't know if the kindle version left off a couple pages or if that truly was the ending. I just felt like I was left hanging and unsatisfied after finishing the book.

After reading Faking It, I was so excited to see that this book was available. I almost didn't buy it based on the synopsis. However, being the sucker for happy endings that I am, I purchased it. I'm really sorry that I did. While I understood Andi's grief, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the way she used Dev/David throughout this book. In fact, she used everyone which to me wasn't her nature. In the first book she was an emotional wreck but she grew from that and honestly I felt like this book was written by a different author. Kind of like Andi finishing Sam's novel. This was far from the happy ending I was hoping for. It left me very unsatisfied and wishing for more. At least at the end of Faking It I felt that both Andi and Dev/David were in good places. At the end of this book I felt like Andi got everything and poor Dev/David was selling out to be with the person he loved knowing that she truly didn't love him the way he deserved to be loved. In a sense she was no better than his "clients" in his former life. Really sad when you think about it and not at all what I hoped for. Live and learn, next time I'll go with my gut instinct after reading a synopsis.

I started reading this and liking the characters. By the middle, I no longer cared what happened to them. All I could think of was if Andi were poorer, she wouldn't have had so much free time to be so hysterical and unlikeable. Her plight did not move me, her incessant whining made me exasperated. David displayed no self-respect. Why in the world would anyone want/support either one of these characters? I quit reading it about 3/4 of the way through.

Glad other people liked it, though. It just did not speak to me (and yes, I have lost very close loved ones).

Let me start by saying that I really enjoyed Faking It. This is usually not my fav genre of book so that could be why Ordinary World was tough for me to sit through.

I found that the series of events were just to unbelievable. The way Lorello went from point A to point Z was a little disappointing. Throughout Faking It, I foung myself rooting for Andi. This book just made me lose all respect for her character. I get the pain and heartache, but watching her become a selfish, self righteous women with bi-polar tendencies was mildly disheartening.

I REALLY wanted to like this book. However, after all the wallowing in self-pity coupled with the rushed conclusion, I was left feeling unsatisfied.

I really loved "Faking It" I thought it was an amazing book! When I saw that there was a sequel I bought it before reading the reviews. That was a bad idea. The first book left off on such a high note, and made ME be in a good mood. I think that is what a good book should do for its reader. After reading the first chapter of "Ordinary World" I stopped. I actually regretted buying it. I read the reviews and saw that a lot of its readers didn't like it and that it was a downer, but I decided to give it a try anyway. It ruined the first book for me. I think this is a perfect example of when to NOT make a sequel, and that's a shame. It could have been a great book.

I finished reading Faking It yesterday it left me wanting more. More Andi, more Sam, and more Devin/David. Right after I was finished I went online and found out that there was a sequel, and that is when I bought Ordinary World. I bought it last night and finished it today. This book was so good! It was about grief/loss, longing, and love. I found myself crying as my heart ached for the characters and laughing at the humor. I loved the characters. I loved Sam, but to me he was no Devin/David and I was thrilled that he was such a big part of this book. This is definitely a book I would recommend to everyone!

"Geez Andi, enough with the pity party!" That was the thought repeatedly rolling through my head while reading this novel. I bought "Ordinary World" immediately after finishing "Faking It". Why, you ask? Because I thoroughly enjoyed "Faking It". It held my attention with an intriguing plot line and interesting characters. "Ordinary World" had those same characters along with another seemingly interesting plot line. But oh, how I was let down! "Ordinary World" had a dark, gloomy cloud hanging over every word and event. Reading this novel was enough to put a dark cloud on MY day! More so, instead of sympathizing with Andi, by the 5th chapter I was ready to climb into the book and slap her in the face while screaming "SNAP OUT OF IT!!!"

While I enjoyed "Faking It" and will probably read it again in the future, I found "Ordinary World" to be an exhausting read I'm not eager to relive any time soon.