Mini Review: Charming by Susie Kaye Lopez

Charming
by Susie Kaye Lopez
Published: October 29, 2010
Kindle Edition

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Three psychics in two countries with the same message can’t be wrong, can they? Sophie Lancaster is about to find out.

Going off to college is stressful enough without throwing in the revelation that someone has been watching you your entire life. This is Sophie’s reality when she is informed that her soul mate from a former lifetime is by her side. A practical skeptic when it comes to love, Sophie refuses to believe this could be true. However, as the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, she finds it is becoming impossible to deny. It is not until Sophie meets her soul mate in a dream and recognizes him immediately that she surrenders to the truth. He is the boy she has been sketching her entire life, the one she calls Charming. Suddenly in the midst of her own fairytale, Sophie soon finds herself in an impossible love that she’d do anything to keep. But are the soul mates destined to live their life together only in dreams?

---

Why? Why? Why?

It was supposed to be so good if the synopsis was any indication.

It all started innocently enough: Sophie was on a trip of a lifetime - can you believe it? - travelling around Europe! I was expecting colorful, right-on-the-dot illustrations of those far-off places that I would travel to one day. But nooooo... it just breezed through, finished the journey before you could say Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile and just after Sophie encountered that psychic. I think the Europe bit was just an excuse to insert that psychic - just the one.

Then, we go to the bit where she finally heard the "surprising" revelation that she had some hot dude trailing her around. And here's where I had my eyebrows up, up, up.  She was supposed to be a "practical" skeptic (see synopsis above) and I expected her to be someone who'd say to those psychics, "Are you high?" But again noooooooo, after being shown or told of a few somethingsomething, she was like, "OMG! Really? I have some gorgeous ghost acting like a stalker? I love him so much!" And the rest is history... Also, while I clapped for a bit that she supposedly learning to get over that Charming will never come back, that bit at the end... 

I love this kind of plot but it was not skillfully wielded. *sigh* It should have been written more seamlessly - not too hurried, and certainly in a way that it was more believable. As the story progressed (I have this habit of reading something and finishing it till the end no matter how awful the beginning), I was feeling more and more like I was reading a fanfiction. Believe me, I've read a lot of them and there are even some out there that are written xx times more superbly.