Review: Say the Word by Julie Johnson

/

It was a decent book. It had two central storylines that did not really fit together. At times, it felt like you were reading two different books.

One storyline is about romance. The main character’s, Lux, life is shaken when her ex, Sebastian (Bash) Covington, enters her life after seven years of being apart. It was a very bad breakup, and through flashbacks readers are able to see Bash and Lux before their relationship went up in flames and why it did.

The other storyline is a mystery where Lux is trying to figure out what happened to her friend. At times the romance aspect of it was a little over powering and the mystery fell to the background. But all and all, because of the lack of balance and entwinedness of the plots, it was overwhelming and could cause a disconnection.

I think that if the author chose to only focus on one- for example Bash and Lux’s relationship, I think that I would have enjoyed it more.

It was extremely hard not to skim with this one. The ratio between internal monologue and external dialogue was very unbalanced. We spent a lot of unnecessary time in the main character’s head and it caused me to feel very intimidated by the long paragraphs and long descriptions.

Also, because of the lack of dialogue, it was very hard to get a clear picture of relationships between the main character and the supporting characters. We were told of those relationships, but the buildup and development was not really there.

I liked Lux; I thought she was a good main character; however, at times it felt like she was a little too judgy. I felt like she hated the majority of the people present. I did really enjoy her relationship with her brother.

I liked Bash in the beginning. But there were some scenes that made his likeable factor decrease. I didn’t like that he was incredibly rude to Lux when they met in present day. I get that she broke his heart, but somethings that he said crossed a line.

Final Analysis

Say the Word has a lot going on with the two storylines that fail to entwine and its unnecessarily long internal monologue. It does fall heavily on the predictable side, and does attempt to offer a somewhat decent romance.