Book Review: Undertow (Dragonfly #2) by Leigh Talbert Moore

The blurb as seen on Goodreads:
Release Date: July 18, 2013
Publisher: Self-published

Falling in love will pull you under...

Bill Kyser has a plan to take the sandy farms of his hometown and turn them into a world-class tourist destination--and become a billionaire in the process.
Alexandra "Lexy" LaSalle has a plan to change her life by becoming a world-famous artist.
Meg Weaver has a plan to hold onto Bill no matter what she has to do.

Three friends, three dreams.
One fatal decision will change all their lives forever.

In Dragonfly, Bill Kyser gave Anna the three journals that held the story behind the powerful developer's seclusion and the damaged lives of his family members.

Anna hoped to find a way for Julian to know the truth, but as she digs deeper into the tragic events of the past, she realizes silence could be the only option.

Now she's in an alliance with the man she formerly feared. And if Julian finds out what she knows, she could lose for good the boy she's starting to love.

Goodreads.Twitter.Website.Facebook

Goodreads.Amazon.Barnes & Noble

 

*Just a warning, there may be some Dragonfly spoilers in this review.*

So Dragonfly was a sweet surprise for me. I really didn’t expect to like it as much as I did and it was a welcome surprise. Because of that feeling, I went into Undertow with slightly high expectations and unfortunately, I was a tad disappointed. 

Dragonfly had Anna confused by her feelings for the mysterious Jack Kyser and falling for her longtime friend Julian. The story ended with Anna finding out a huge secret that linked both of her crushes. I was super excited to sit down and find out what happens next. Does Anna tell Jack? Does she tell Julian? Does she tell anyone?

Well…we still don’t know.

Undertow was more like a filler story – one giant back story. At the end of Dragonfly, Bill Kyser gives Anna three journals with the hopes that after reading them, she would keep their secret. So from there, we journey into the land of lost journals. 

Journal #1: Meg Weaver.

Journal #2: Alexandra LaSalle

Journal #3: Bill Kyser

Each journal follows the exact same timeline and the exact same events with some variance due to different lives. Let’s start with Meg’s. I almost couldn’t read hers. While I felt bad for her knowing what her fate was, I really could not stand her as a person. She was extremely vain and only cared what people thought of her. She was prestige and money, and manipulated everyone around her to get what she wanted, including her husband – which, I’m sorry, is wrong. Alex’s journal to me was the most realistic and most relatable. And Bill’s was just…weird? It seemed extremely out of character that he would have a journal. This was a man who busted his butt to graduate college early and then started up his business right after. When would he have found time to write in a journal?

Then there was the journal writing itself. They were written just like a book, not journal entries. This style took me completely out of the story and I couldn’t relate properly to them because my head kept shouting, “This is not how people write journals!” At the end of the book, the author has a note stating that she took liberties and wrote the journals as actual stories instead of journal entries. Maybe if that had been stated at the beginning of the book I may feel a little differently, I honestly don’t know.

While this book wasn’t amazing to me, I am still very intrigued on how it’s going to wrap up and am still excited to read the final one. And a series I would recommend for some quick beach reading.

 I received an e-copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.