{ Practice Cake by Dalya Moon }

Practice Cake by Dalya Moon

Published Oct 25, 2011

Source: from author for review

Format: ebook

From Goodreads:

There’s one thing Maddie finds more tempting than red velvet cake: her coworker, Drew. All it takes is one of his sly winks or a playful hip-check by the cooler, and she’s incinerating the cookies. Her boyfriend would not approve.

When a reality TV crew descends upon the bakery, her simple summer job gets even more complicated. Maddie could become the Bakery Network’s next breakout star, if she can handle the heat of being cast as a show villain. Drew has an alternate idea: run away from everything, with him and his sexy tousled hair. She decides to take the leap, but when she finds out Drew’s been hiding a shocking secret, Maddie looks down at her packed suitcase and takes a moment to think. Should she fly off to Australia with a guy she hardly knows, or should she pick up her suitcase and hit him with it?

Chock full of imperfect people behaving badly, Practice Cake is for readers who enjoy a good laugh.

My Review:

First off, I must admit that this is certainly not my genre of choice. However, as I have said before, I think it is good to go outside your comfort zone once in awhile.

Practice Cake sounded like a cute, quick read and the author is from Canada! Thus, I agreed to take it on for review. Sadly, it did not deliver for me. While the storyline would have made for a quick, fun read, the writing lacked in most areas. I am assuming this book is being pushed out as a YA Contemporary as the main character, Maddie, is a young 18 year old girl fresh out of High School. However, through most of the book I found her to be much younger. This one is hard to classify for me. I think it would be more enjoyable to a younger teen, but there is some subject matter that is more suited to an older teen.

I also had some difficulty with the slang used throughout the book. Maybe coming from an Adult prospective has tainted my opinion, but I just found it annoying. Overall, I just had a very hard time connecting to these characters. I also had a hard time with the pacing and flow in general. I found myself turning back the pages to see if I had missed something. I kept thinking that perhaps Maddie had ADD or something of that nature. I just found the dialogue and scenes bouncing around too much and did not flow with any normalcy.

I must admit, however, that author, Dalya Moon, redeemed herself in the final chapter. It was wonderfully written. The pacing, the internal dialogue and just the general depth of characterisation was spot on. This final chapter was so well written that I have no doubt that Dalya Moon's next book will only get better.

In the end? While this may have not been my cup of tea, I am sure someone out there would enjoy this nice light read. However, if YA Contemporary is not your thing? You may want to pass on this one.

Rating: 2 stars