ETA: I
have changed the final grading to 1, I enjoyed the book immensely but it turns
out the plot was “borrowed” from the movie Shelter. Plagiarism is a terrible
thing, perhaps said borrowing of a plot and changing a couple of things here and
there including names is not illegal, but to me is unethical and just plain
wrong. Writing is all about originality, stealing someone else’s idea makes you
a thief not a writer, it may not be this way for everyone, including this Dreamspinner Press editor, but it is to me. What a shame.
ETA 2: Dreamspinner Press has issued a response, which you can read it here. In addition, they are offering a free download of the book for a limited time, so that readers can form their own opinions. After watching the movie I can say that the book borrows heavily from it and that all this mess could have been avoided if the author had at least acknowledged where he got his inspiration. If you don't want to read the book or watch the movie, you can always read this post that lists all the similarities.
ETA 2: Dreamspinner Press has issued a response, which you can read it here. In addition, they are offering a free download of the book for a limited time, so that readers can form their own opinions. After watching the movie I can say that the book borrows heavily from it and that all this mess could have been avoided if the author had at least acknowledged where he got his inspiration. If you don't want to read the book or watch the movie, you can always read this post that lists all the similarities.
Source: we received an e-ARC of the book through NetGalley for review purposes.
Everything about this book appealed to me. The cover, the blurb, the genre, when I saw it I just had to read it, I felt like the cat that found the golden catnip. I love contemporary romances with clever children, guys struggling to raise them and friends-to-lovers stories, and this book had all of that and more. This is T.J. Klune’s first book and he did a fantastic job, enough to make it into my top 10 best books of the year and into my auto-buy list.
If you read the synopsis you will know that the book is about Bear who at 17 gets a letter from his mom telling him that she is leaving with her lowlife boyfriend and that she’s leaving his 6 year old brother Ty -aka the Kid- with him. Three years latter Bear is raising his precocious brother, working at a grocery store and living a very regular and stale life. He has a girlfriend and a best friend who have been with him since he was a kid and who have helped him with the Kid, and he also has Otter. Well, he doesn’t really have him because for the past three years he’s been living in San Diego and even though he was also one of his closest friends and probably the one he relayed the most on, things are really complicated between them. But everything is about to change because Otter is back in town.
