REVIEW: More Than Friends by Jess Dee
Dear Ms Dee:
I knew going in that this was a novella and for the past year or so, I’ve kind of sworn off novellas because I rarely find them emotionally fulfilling. The premise of this story was so good, however, that I could not resist. In this friends to lovers story, our heroine, Lucy Lawson, confesses her love to her best friend, Sebastian Blackford Not only does Lucy admit that she loves Seb but that she fantasizes about him regularly. His response is out of the ordinary.
Instead of the two of them rushing off to bed and transforming their friendship into a romantic partnership, the Seb grimaces and admits that he just met someone and he thinks there might be real potential there. Lucy is crushed.
She rushes out of the cafe and he follows. When she tells him that they need a break, he becomes angry. They are best friends, and he doesn’t want to lose her over this.
This was such a different premise but because of the length, instead of seeing the two struggle to maintain their friendship and then come to a deeper understanding of their feelings, it was resolved with two sex scenes and a few tears. Seb goes home and finds he is turned on by her fantasies and despite the woman that he thinks might be the one, rushes back to Lucy to make sweet love to her.
As a reader, I am just pages away from Seb saying that he’s really into this other girl so his sexual attention to Lucy is out of place and jarring. I’m not prepared for it. All of their post confession antics are centered around sexual activities and almost no out of bedroom interaction. I guess I am to presume from their six year friendship that the bedroom is the only place unexplored. In fact, Lucy tries to express this very sentiment to Seb but his only response is physical. (She tells him to stop thinking with his dick and he responds that he can’t help it).
Seb’s actions don’t show someone who has given a lot of thought to what it means to love someone. Their entire relationship seems to be based on how many orgasms he can give Lucy. I needed to see more internal or external narrative on why Seb thinks that his relationship with Lucy is worthy pursuing. Why did he think the girl he was dating was one with whom he was serious and why, if that was the case, could he so easily throw her over for Lucy? Seb’s inconstancy and focus on the physical bothered me. I wished it had bothered Lucy more.
While the sex scenes were hot, there just wasn’t enough emotional glue to hold it all together and I came away sorely disappointed. D
Best regards,
Jane
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