A review by shanayahreads
Watch Over Me by Claire Corbett

3.0

Actual rating: 2.5 stars
Full Review Here


Starting off, I was intrigued, I don’t usually pick up books of this sort – some parts war, some parts romance, all set in a contemporary world. It took a while for me to get into the feel of the book, since for some reason my mind thought the book was set in the ‘50’s, and I would get tripped up whenever something relatively modern was mentioned, but once I got the hang of it, I really enjoyed it. Until the romance set in.

I liked how the book was written, I was drawn in and was always interested to see what was going to happen next. I really felt the emotion throughout the book, the author is brilliant at writing emotions. It felt like a book I wouldn’t read and then just forget about (ahem, Perks of Being a Wallflower), but as I progressed through the book, it deviated further away from the interesting start.

I got a little confused with all the characters up until around page 140, because of the different groups, but once I got the hang of how things worked, it was alright. There were female characters, but I didn’t really find them to be strong, so that really disappointed me, especially since this is set in modern times. I would have expected at least one from all of the characters in the story. I liked Sylvie initially, and I thought she had potential to be a strong character, but her character changed so much when the romance started and during.

I wasn’t a fan of the romance between Sylvie and the lieutenant. Initially it sort of seemed like the author was trying to romanticise possessiveness, over-protectiveness and having the female be a simple ‘trophy’, I’m aware that people tend to be more protective when it comes to war or possible danger, but I feel like that was a little over the top. Further on into the story, it got progressively worse, with both parties having constant mood swings and Sylvie giving off a damsel-in-distress vibe, and feeling like she was nothing without him and he was the only thing to make her happy.

To be honest, I wouldn’t recommend this, not when there are so many other stories with stronger characters and healthier relationships.


I received a review copy from the publisher


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