Review: One Special Love by Abby Gale

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Follow up novel - One Night Only #2
Release - March 26, 2017
Genre - Contemporary Romance
Dual POV - 1st person
Heat - 2 out of 5
Length - 184 pages
Review of the prequel, One Night Only

ASHTON KENNEDY
My life stopped after I lost the love of my life before we even had the chance to begin.
But now my heart has found another reason to start beating again.

ACACIA WINTERS
He’s a walking contradiction. One minute he’s rude and cold, the next, caring and passionate. He enters my life and steals my heart with his deeply engrained scars.
Can he let go of the ghost from his past and let me in?

APRIL ESTELLE
This isn’t my story; I’m just the spectator in the background.
And I’m dead.

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MY REVIEW

Please Note: the problem may be with me, not the story. I encourage you to experience it for yourselves and take my opinion as just that - my opinion.

I failed to connect with this story. I admit that the plot had tremendous potential, but its execution left a lot to be desired. I think my biggest issue was that I wasn't convinced about the grand love story that was supposed to have been developed in the prequel between April and Ashton. I'm sorry, but it wasn't believable to me. Despite reading the novella, I never once felt that those two were in love. Not to the lengths that I was supposed to believe to get through this story.

It was hard for me to suspend my belief in reality and just become absorbed with the story. There was nothing to connect them and beyond knowing each other's names and sharing a Chemistry class, they didn't even know each other. Never had a conversation. Weren't friends. Didn't hang out on the perimeter of mutual friends. They shared nothing!! So, for me, his grief came off as melodramatic.

The thing is... I expected the grief. They did spend One Night Only together before she passed, but this story made it out like they had a great love that would stand the test of time. A love so deep and so profound that anyone would be lucky to find it. She's haunting him and he's got a room in his home like a dedicated shrine to her. WTH?!

As for Acacia, she was the first character I actually felt real sympathy for. I wonder why the loss she suffered wasn't explored more. It was almost like her loss wasn't as important or as substantial as the loss Ashton suffered after losing his one night girlfriend. Hmmmm... I was hoping for a conversation between them about their mutual loss and maybe about how to accept and move on from it. Sadly, that wasn't in the cards.

Instead, Acacia was sort of a doormat for Ashton and seemed more of a consolation prize. He spent 95% of this book fixated on April. Am I really supposed to believe in their happy ending? Too much time was spent on April and Ashton's suffering over April and it overshadowed anything that he could legitimately be feeling for Acacia. Overall, this story had the propensity to be incredible because all of the ingredients were there, but I needed more in order to believe in it.