Book Review: Almost Perfect

Julie Ortolon has been on my must buy list since I read Lead Me On. LMO is the middle book in the series about siblings, ghosts and treasure with a whole lot of adventure and humor. I loved it and highly recommend it. After reading that series, I bought every Ortolon book I could find and even shared them with my Mate’s mother and now she’s hooked too. I was very pleased to hear she had another series in the works, A Perfect Trilogy. Almost Perfect is the first book in this new series where three friends make a pact (you might call it a bet) to take chances and follow their dreams.

The main characters in Almost Perfect are high school sweethearts now in their late 30s, that had a lot of growing to do before they would be ready to settle down. Through the story they find out things about each other they didn’t know to ask when they were younger, yet as much as they’ve grown there was much for them to learn together.

The characters were real enough, thought it was sometimes hard for me to read through the misinterpretations without wanting to scream “say what you really think, idiot” as the characters communicated. Misunderstanding and assumptions plagued their reintroduction of the characters from the beginning, but that was their biggest hurdle to overcome. At times the story was almost like a sitcom (which I no longer watch) where you can predict what stupid thing the character is going to do next and must agonize with them then as they try to pull themselves out of the mega mess they’ve created. The thing that kept me reading was that these were very real life messes, not a “Friends” or “Cheers” storyline with intentional lying and deception.

Dreams are important, as are love and trust. These are lessons hard learned by the couple as they struggle to understand how they fit into each others lives after 20 years apart. The supporting cast of characters are vibrant and worthy of their own stories. I look forward to finding the next two books in the series to see what kind of mess the Doctor and Nanny fall into as they fulfill the requirements of the pact.