Before I start, a little book-related rant, which will probably make you all think I’m slightly crazy! I’m never a fan of books that remove the blurb from the back and fill it with reviews instead, relegating the blurb to the inside cover. If I wanted to read praise for your book, I’d go online and look at reviews, I just want to know what the book is about!!!

Am I just crazy to find this annoying? It doesn’t seem to happen very often, but it really bugs me!

However, my sister bought me this book for Christmas and when I turned it over to see what it was about, the back of the book lacked a blurb and instead contained quotes such as

“A lush, flowing elegant novel, Every Day, Every Hour shows a world where love is stronger than will”

and

“It is rare to find such a beautiful and romantic love story so wonderfully told…A true discovery”

However, it was hard not to be swept away by such glowing reviews and forget about my brief book-induced-anger and look forward to what promised to be an epic love story.

But my book induced anger was soon replace by book induced uneasiness, when I realised after the first few chapters of the book that we’re supposed to believe that a 5 year old and a 9 year old fall so deeply in love that when they are parted, their lives fall to pieces slowly but surely. First of all, if their parents realised for a second how much time these two children spent together, why in the world didn’t they write letters to each other after Dora was forced to move to Paris leaving Luka behind in Croatia. I find it hard to believe that any parents would be so intentionally cruel as to break up such a strong friendship (it’s too creepy to call it love).

And then throughout the book, Dora and Luka’s lives intersect again and again. But instead of doing what they both want and what we’re supposed to believe they’re destined to do and actually just get together, they seem intent on making each other’s lives miserable, all the while believing that they’re just doing the right thing.

It seems like the message of this book was always supposed to be ‘Love Conquers All’, but the amount of adversity thrown their way is slightly ridiculous, and entirely of their own making. I mean, you can’t really use your girlfriend as an excuse for why you can’t be together, when you’re still going to spend an entire weekend sleeping with Dora anyway. You’ve already cheated on your girlfriend in bed and in your heart, so what’s the point of staying together and making everyone bloody miserable!!

I just failed to see the romance in this book and simply wanted to bash both their heads together and save us all the time. Don’t get my wrong, the book was well written. I liked the way that paragraph by paragraph we could be changing from Dora to Luke, getting the perspective of one moment from both sides. And I did like the way that both characters had similar thoughts and actions that were continued throughout the book, tying them together and making them seem like a perfect matching pair.

The concept was excellent, I just wish the two main characters and the obstacles in their path to true love weren’t so damned annoying!

Sorry to Vicky though, I didn’t mean to go on such a rant about the Christmas present she bought me, especially since her buying me books in the first place was pretty awesome and unexpected! But the other book she bought me contained references to Bridget Jones and Pride and Prejudice, so I’m almost certain to enjoy that one!