Blog Tour Book Review – In The Eyes Of An Angel by Kimberly Livingston

Title: In The Eyes Of An Angel

Author: Kimberly Livingston

Publication Date: 26th July 2013

Format: ARC e-Book

Note: This book was received from the author in return for an honest review

About the book:

Camille Ryan is in her final year at Southern State University. Working as a bartender in a local establishment in order to support herself, she knows from her mother’s experience with her alcoholic father not to depend on anyone. That is until travelling businessman Rick Pantanelli decides to visit her bar. He is a handsome, well-off, successful professional and her senior by a full 17 years.

Camille is used to doing everything she is expected to do. But when she meets Rick she is swept away by his good looks, his charm and his ability to take care of her. Rick is used to getting what he wants. But when he meets Camille he is swept away by her beauty and her inner fragility. He finds himself believing he can take care of her. Is this belief strong enough to make him a better man?

What I Thought:

In The Eyes Of An Angel tells the story of Camille Ryan, a final year accountancy student who is not looking for love just trying to survive the final few months of college while working late shifts at the bar and avoiding her partying housemates. Camille isn’t overly experienced in love, her one serious relationship during her time at college was with a guy who was more interested in her paying the bills than in her, so when a businessman walks into the bar while she’s on shift she’s enthralled by him. I want to start off by saying overall I did enjoy this book but at times I found myself wondering what type of book it was trying to be – when I read the blurb and signed up for the book tour I was expecting to receive something fairly firmly planted in the chick lit genre, when I received the book I was a little less sure, the cover and Kimberly’s dedication to her father ‘who always wanted to write a racy novel’ made me think it was more in the 50 Shades of Grey camp, which isn’t a book I’ve ever read nor wanted to. Fortunately for me it fell more to the chick lit side, if you pick up this book expecting a full on romance novel you’ll be disappointed, it’s not a raunchy book filled with numerous detailed sex scenes, however this suited me just fine.

During the novel Camille ends up having to chose between two men, Rick the much older businessman who is used to getting his own way and Joe, an accountant who works at the small accountancy firm where Camille completes her summer internship. I won’t tell you who she chooses but I will say I was firmly in Joe’s camp, Rick just isn’t that likeable as a character, used to getting what he wants, he’s seeing a number of different women and he has communication problems, at times he comes across as too controlling, throwing money at Camille because he doesn’t want her working at the bar. If I was being generous I would say he does it because he wants to help her concentrate on her studies, and he has the money to do so and it’s how he knows how to fix things, but honestly giving someone $1,000 after only knowing them for a couple of months just seems a little creepy and sinister to me, and I found myself wanting to shake Camille and say he wasn’t worth the stress she was feeling, wondering if she should call him, or when she’d next hear from him. Joe couldn’t be more different, he’s approachable, friendly and has the added positive of knowing Camille’s father, and having an alcoholic in his own family understands what she’s going through with her father.

The book isn’t particularly long, just over 200 pages, and it only took a couple of hours to read, if that, and this perhaps is it’s biggest downfall. For me it seems as though it tries to cover too large a time period in the limited pages. As a result everything seems a little bit rushed, and the supporting character’s weren’t as developed as they could have been.

Would I recommend it?

Overall I enjoyed it enough that I would pick up a follow up and see what happens next between Camille and the one she chose, I’d actually also quite like to follow up with the one she didn’t and see how that affected him. I’d like to see it either a little longer, or not try to cover such an ambitious time frame so the plot and characters could be developed a little more.