ARC Review: Adam's Boys by Anna Clifton

Title: Adam's Boys

Author: Anna Clifton

Release Date: September 1st, 2013

Publisher: Escape Publishing

Buy: Amazon

Goodreads Summary

For fans of Kat Martin and Debbie Macomber comes a story of family and redemption...

Wrong girl — wrong time? Adam’s fling with Abbie just weeks after the death of his wife may have been all wrong, but their time together gave him the strength to return home to his newborn son, Pete, and start their new life together.

Wrong guy — wrong time? Abbie's fling with Adam may have been all wrong, but their time together gave her Henry, the sunshine in her life, and although Adam is long gone, Abbie can never regret the time they spent together.

But two wrongs don't necessarily make a right. Adam Cooper is back, and when he learns the truth about his unknown son, he is hell-bent on creating a home and family for his boys, even if it means blackmailing Abbie into taking part.

Abbie has scars from her own tumultuous childhood, and losing Henry would destroy her. But with only mistrust and pain to bind them, can she and Adam ever find a way through regret to love and the family they could be?

I ruined a perfectly good reading streak by picking this book up. I suppose I should have known that I couldn’t get lucky for so long (since my luck is absolute shit) but I hoped that I would be wrong.

Let me start with the namesake of the book, Adam. HE IS SO SLOW. Forget everything else he did. He knows how Abbie got pregnant because their mutual friend Justin told him. Some dude came around for 3 weeks, got Abbie pregnant and went back to London. Which was exactly what he did. How many men does he think slept with her and went BACK to London like he did and around the same time he did! It was just baffling seeing that he was all nice to Henry never suspecting that the kid was his own. How stupid does someone have to be to not get that? And he didn’t find out using his own wit, oh no, Abbie had to tell him, even with the fact that they kind of hung out quite a bit before she told him. And when she told him, he lost it and got all high and mighty on her about keeping his son away from him. Never mind the fact that he actually left HER with the promise of coming back for her when he was ready. It’s not her fault he never contacted her, plus seeing that he was some rich ass dude, she was right to think that he didn’t want her meddling in his affairs and ruining their reputation. Despite everything at least Abbie FEELS guilty and apologizes, I don’t see him doing that at all, only using her guilt to manipulate her. With everything going on with Abbie, you’d think his ‘assholeness’ only extends so far but it turns out, he was pretty much an asshole when it came to his first wife as well. It’s not even because of what happened with Pete, I understand that, what I don’t understand is the fact that he married her when even she knew it would never work out b/w them. It’s not fair to her that she never got to spend her time with someone who would love her. In fact what’s worse is that only a couple weeks after she died, he fled, although I’ll give him credit for knowing that what he did was wrong.

We also had a doormat in this book; in fact it was the main character whose name was Abbie. It makes me want to cry to see a character like her, she is so WEAK. So so so weak. The book starts off at a charity event which she went to so that she could tell Adam that he had a son yet as soon as she sees him and sees how awkward things are between them she freaks and decides to tell him ‘later’. Wait so she didn’t expect any awkwardness at all? How dumb do you have to be to not see that coming? At least she doesn’t take a huge ass time to tell him after that one mistake. Even with all that, I was still ready to give her a chance to improve but things just got worse from there. Adam would just have to snap his fingers and she would be willing to do anything. He tells her that either they can go to court or she can move in with him. So she moves in with him, a guy she barely knows but shares a past with, boy isn’t THAT such a wise thing to do? When did people become so smart? There is also this scene where they are discussing character differences b/w men and women and how women complicate things and men keep it down to Earth and she agrees with him. I almost cried. How can someone hate their own gender so much? She even agrees to go to London with him to visit his family; I mean take HENRY to visit the family. Yeah sure. That’s just such a smart thing to do isn’t it? But then again, it is Abbie so I shouldn’t really expect much. Abbie also thinks that Adam has great self-control, so wait, when he was manipulating her and being all angry and blaming her, that counts as great self-control? Well I guess since he didn’t punch her in the face at all, he probably DOES have great self- control because I wouldn’t have been able to hold myself back.

I am not even going to mention Pete; Henry however, deserves a mention. I am a little confused about how a 3 year old can be so intelligent, when I was 3, I could barely talk never mind bake cookies. Maybe I am just jealous of a 3 year old I don’t know, but I cannot really imagine a 3 year old knowing where everything is in the kitchen and measuring everything out, never mind being able to reach the kitchen slab. The one thing that made me like Henry initially was the fact that he was actually vary of Adam, but that changed too.

As you can tell, there wasn’t much of a plot, only angst. Things did get better for a couple of pages, I was even considering giving the book a 2.5, but then the author dumped a whole lot of cheese on us. The only good thing I can come up with about this book is this quote

“And do you think you’ll get a guarantee from any man that life will always be dandy? No guy will give you that. He doesn’t exist. But even though I bring loads of uncertainties into your life that doesn’t mean I don’t have a whole swag of redeeming features to make me the perfect guy for you”

Okay never mind I take that back, I seemed to have missed the part where he says SWAG. Wow. Umm does that even make sense? A whole swag of redeeming qualities. Let me google that. Nope.. I didn’t see anything in the first 3 entries to help me out there.

The ending is bleh. SPOILER ALERT. She gives up everything for the guy so that they can have their happy ending. Woohoo and then when she finds out she is pregnant and he wants to put off the whole party thing so that he can help her out, she disagrees. And says something like

“Happy wife, Happy Life”

I cannot even. Someone please stop me from making decisions like this. I am only making my life worse. I am rather thankful though because I didn’t know there was a book before this when I started it and if I had I would have read it and I probably would have hated myself even more.