Fade In by M. Mabie
Fade In
Synopsis:
Tatum Elliot is a successful writer on a hit television show, lives in an Upper East Side apartment and loves her life. She wouldn’t change a thing. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a choice. She's losing her sight.
Tripping over her tongue and her heels, Tatum all too quickly realizes that the things which appeared so important before are slowly slipping away leaving room for what really matters. With the support of her best friends, family and colleagues, she begins to see that there’s much more to life… and herself.
When Ben Harris enters her life as her new personal assistant, she can’t tell if it’s his good looks and charm that are working on her libido, or his kind and helpful nature working on her heart? Whatever it is, neither one of them can resist it.
As her vision fades out, a world of love and happiness just might…Fade In.
Fade In is a contemporary-romance novel about laughing through your tears and telling life to, quite frankly, “Suck it.” This novel contains sexual situations that the author may or may not have tried at home… for your safety, of course. Research is research.
Review:
Alright. Fade In. Here we go. This might get a bit ugly, but I did wait quite a bit before sitting down to write this so we shall see. There will be spoilers and author I am sorry if you read this, but I hated Tatum too much I am sure that will come across in this review. Really this book made me really annoyed, but on the plus side I got a lot of angry cleaning done between chapter. There is that.
Alright, so I thought going in that this book would be interesting. I thought it would be different reading about someone going blind and then see how the deal with that and maybe them learning to be blind and do things we take for granted and whatnot. Well *spoiler alert* Tatum doesn't actually go blind in this story. Nope. Sure she had really bad eyesight, but even in the epilogue she can still see some so...this is a book of Tatum whining and complaining and poor me-ing her life. She throws temper tantrums all the time and basically acts like a two year old which is so annoying. I get that she is going blind, that is scary and whatnot, but the way it was written I did not feel for her at all. The way it was written made me want to yell at her "At least you are still alive!! Be thankful for what you do have!" She was such a selfish little brat that I just couldn't deal with her. Plus if anyone tries to do anything nice for her she just explodes on them. How dare they try and be nice!?! It was just...I just kept thinking how old are you? WAY too old for the way you are acting.
So she is going blind. I hated her. She has this strange idea of what will happen when she is blind that I just didn't understand. It is like she wouldn't be able to do anything besides sit in a corner by herself and cry. She will not be able to work as the writer for a comedy show. Why? I don't know. She thinks blind people cannot be funny? Blind people don't get comedy? What? I don't know. When she finds out that both, yes both, of Ben's parents are blind she is just shocked and amazed. She never knew blind people could do normal things like have children and such. I mean who knew blind people could do anything? Ugh. So annoying. Sure, being blind would be a challenge and your life would be much different, but you can do things. I was constantly wanting to just be like suck it up buttercup! At least you have options, resources, etc. that a lot of people don't have. She has quite a bit of money so she can afford a driver to take her places, a life assistant, etc. She could have whatever high tech gadgets would help her get around or whatever people she would need to have a more normal life. A lot of people are not as lucky so sorry if I don't feel bad for your whiny self. It was bad. Really this should have been easy to make me sympathetic towards Tatum, but the author did the exact opposite and made me hate her. Oh well I guess.
So Tatum is losing her eyesight, but at the beginning of the book she really doesn't want to try and do anything about it. She just wants to be all poor me and get angry with people for helping. Like Ben. Ben comes on the scene and is her personal assistant. He is super sweet and tries to make her life easier. His first day he switches out the hinges on her cabinet doors so they will automatically close so she doesn't hit her head on them when she forgets to close them. Does she thank him at all? Nope. She immediately is super pissed off at him cause how dare he try and help her!?! She really needs to get over her pride and suck it up and accept help. Ugh.
So Ben. He shows up randomly and Tatum wants to get with him so much she hires him as her assistant. Which is perfect! That is totally how you should choose who to hire. So he is super sweet, obviously hiding something which is pretty apparent, I knew what he was hiding, at least most of what his secret is. He helps take care of Tatum, grows closer to her, has experience with blind people and slowly gets her to start trying to accept her eyesight situation. She still blows up at him whenever he tries to do anything to show her she can still be a person, but he still sticks around. Really he was almost perfect and way too good for her. I don't really know why he stuck around as man I wouldn't have been able to do that.
Things move slowly for the two of them. For one thing Tatum had just gotten out of a relationship when she met Ben. I use the term relationship loosely. It didn't seem like there was much there besides some sexy time on the weekends, but whatever. Oh, and the ex? Why does he suddenly turn into a drug using psycho stalker once she breaks up with him? Why was that even in there? It made no sense. Neither of them seemed to be very serious and it just didn't make any sense that he would be that upset to lose her. It was like it was added just to add some pointless drama which didn't work.
I really liked Ben and he was the one good thing in the story. Yes, he lied about something, but honestly I didn't care. It wasn't a big deal to me, but of course it was a huge deal in the story. The entire time I was reading I was just waiting for the big blow up when she found out his secret. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but once she does she magically becomes this different person. All of a sudden she is this strong person who is dealing with her situation and learning to let others help her. It made no sense. She was not at all like this throughout the rest of the story so to suddenly completely change into another person? Not believable.
So even if I wouldn't have hated Tatum as much as I did this still wouldn't have been the story for me. Tatum is really crass and the humor in the book is just not my sense of humor. That is fine, and this review would have just been well this is not my style but you might like it. I don't read a lot of stories that are comedies simply because I don't usually find the same things funny that most people seem to. I can recognize that and see where other people would enjoy something even if I don't, but unfortunately Tatum was just a nightmare to read. I really couldn't stand her and her temper tantrums so it was just not a good read. Unfortunate as it could have been a really interesting story, but it just did not work. I will say this was one of my book club reads for this month and almost everyone else loved Tatum so...maybe you would as well? I don't know. They all saw her as a strong person throughout where as I felt like she was two so...Not a good read, but apparently I am in the minority.
Oh, one last small thing that bugged me about this story - small geography things that are not correct. This is something that always bugs me to no end. Like Ben and Tatum take a trip and they fly into San Francisco and then drive north to a cabin near Sequoia National Forest/Kings Canyon. Only problem with that? That is not north of San Francisco! It takes two seconds to look at a map and see that. It is not like this particular spot was needed either so why not choose a place that is actually north of San Francisco? Like a cabin near Lake Tahoe or something? Things like that are little, but they really bug me. It takes two seconds to look it up so why not make sure it is correct?
Rating: ★
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