There was a time when the date a book by Kristan Higgins came out was religiously circled on my calendar. Not anymore. I found her last four or five books the same of rinse and repeat cycle. I don't mind the setting of various small towns in New England as I find them utterly charming. However, her other tricks -- the humor, the obligatory wacky character, even the dog -- are getting old. Even throwing her leading couple into the setting of what I believe her second best book can't help. For me, the ending of 'Catch of the day' is already perfect in itself. I don't want to revisit Malone and Maggie. I have my own perception of what they were and my own imagination of what they would become, but the author forces my hand and I came out disappointed, to say the least. Malone, my sexy, stoic Malone, becomes this corny, mute guy I don't recognize. Maggie reads like a meddling, overly bubbly, insincere person (crying at someone else's wedding, someone that's not even close to you?). Harper, the heroine, is a no-fun snob with maturity of a seventeen-year-old girl. Now I look back and I find this last quality in all Kristan Higgin's leading female, they're thirty-something women with teenage mentality down to their cutesy mental exclaimation. Nevertheless they possess some qualities that make them likeable -- kindness, charm,guilessness, sense of humor. Harper might have (a little bit of) all those except she opts not to use them when they count most, with James, our hero, one redeeming thing in this book in my opinion. Although, this book is third person narrative and we can see from both of leading couple's POV. It's still mainly Harper's book, and it's hard to like a book when you don't like the main character. I just wish that the book would have been more of Jame's perspective, but then we wouldn't have a happy ending because obviously he sure got raw end of the deal, the heroine doesn't deserve the hero in any way, shape or form.
3/5
Read it yourself.
