Review: Illuminated by Erica Orloff

This was a tough one for me. I didn't love it. I also didn't completely hate it. The writing style was nice and the premise had potential. My biggest issue is that the story wasn't more fleshed out. We have our main characters, Callie and August, who are supposed to be on this great hunt for the origins of this extremely rare palimpsest and they make a couple stops to talk to the owners of the book and they get the answer. There was also a supposedly dangerous rare book thief mentioned several times throughout the story, but never made an actual appearance. It seemed pointless to include this if it weren't going to be an actual threat or cause some complication in the story. Instead, we got a too easily solved mystery that all wrapped up in a very short amount of time and was tied up with a pretty little bow.

Another issue was the mind blowing insta-love of August and Callie. They met and that night he expected her to show up in his hammock because he "hinted" that he wanted that by simply pointing out that he had a hammock. Then after a whopping 24 hours he was texting her at 3 am telling her he missed her. By the second day they were professing their feelings and sleeping half naked together while imagining they are being pushed together by the ghosts of Heloise and Abelard. By the third day they were planning on running away together to go to Paris and kiss on top of the Eifel Tower while looking for the story of the book and it's prior owners. It was sweet and I liked the characters together, but the story moved at such a ridiculously rapid pace that it just became a caricature of the love story I think the author was going for. While the tone of the romance was supposed to be epic, it instead played out on the page as rapid and unhealthy infatuation.

Overall, this was a big disappointment. Not because the story was bad or the writing was boring, but simply because there needed to be a lot more to it. If the author had made the mystery harder to solve, included at least one actual stumbling block along the way, and given the characters time to form a real connection this would have been much more enjoyable. I did enjoy her writing style though and may pick up another of her books in the future.