Review: Every Time He Leaves by Anna Karington

Title: Every Time He Leaves
Author: Anna Karington
Series: Standalone, I think
Genre: Contemporary Romance/ Adult
Publisher: Self-published
Publication Date: September 25th 2015
Edition: Kindle Edition, 211 pages
Source: NetGalley
Purchase: Amazon US

Synopsis:

     I'm different now. I won't be that girl again. I'm in control. I'm the one who's going to leave him wishing he'd given me his everything when he had the chance... 

     Lana Raeven and Jarek Dean shared a night of passion, but the next morning, she woke up alone. Nine years later, Lana works as a successful event coordinator for a prestigious company. Bold and confident in every area but love, she hasn’t ever recovered from Jarek’s abandonment. However, a chance encounter with her former lover grants her an opportunity to take back her power. 

     Rather than chastising him for his cruelty, she plays unfazed and invites him back into her life. Using her ingenuity and sensuality as weapons, she draws him in with the intention of destroying him as he once destroyed her. But her plan for revenge isn’t as simple as she initially believed, for the more time she spends with Jarek, the more she’s reminded of why she loved him. And if she isn’t careful, she could lose him all over again.

Review:

I am having a hard time reviewing this book. It wasn't exactly bad, but it wasn't really that memorable either. 

Lana was not likable at all. Well she had her moments and those moments were mostly near the end when she stood up to her mother and sisters, and had nothing to do with the romance aspect of this story. In many ways this book could have benefited from not having a romance and was more about a young woman standing up to her pretty vindictive mother and petty older sister. Many times the romance felt really out of place.

Janet and the older sister, I forgot her name, they were a little cartoonish in a way. Lana the middle child is the only one with her shit together being 100% independent, yet she is the one that feels inadequate, for reasons that are never really explained, nor does she have a real reason to feel the way she does other than what happened between her and Jarek nearly a decade before. 

Now lets talk about Jerek. He was kind of likable. I mean there was nothing instantly wrong with him. But as the story went on, the more I was pretty confused at what he was trying to accomplish. He was pretty cagey about why he never contacted them after he left, and when Lana got her head out of her ass and stopped trying to play games with him and asked him what happened and why he left and never called or even wrote a letter he just get's all "Why can't the past stay in the past."

The story progression is fairly predictable and while I sometimes don't mind a little cliche in my books, this one was just a little too cookie cutter for me to give it more than "readable" status.