Don't Want to Miss a Thing by Jill Mansell

It was almost midnight and Dexter Yates was in bed with his girlfriend when his phone burst into life.

This would be cool if this were about a phone that came to life and started killing people because it had gone insane after being exposed for so long to people talking nonsense about useless things, droning on about nonsense forever. I know I would lose it.

Alas, this is nothing more than the bed setting cliche and phone call opening cliche colliding.

The rest of the paragraph goes like this:

Possessed of lightning reflexes, she grabbed it off the bedside table before he could reach it himself.

Then the next paragraph is all of one sentence:

Honestly, some people were so mistrustful.

The use of past tense here makes it sound like people were mistrustful but aren't now.

First thing said:

"It says Laura."

The girl asks who the Laura is who's calling Dexter but Dexter, heroically refuses to say. Why this is heroic, is beyond me, I mean it's not like the guy whipped out his Excalibur and slayed a freckled dragon or anything. Instead he says, "Someone an awful lot nicer than you."

Quite the nasty thing to say to a girl while in bed, but some guys are just expressive that way, I guess. Anyway, the scene is about Dexter learning that his sister just had a baby. So the writing is structured in such a way to make the story sound more interesting than it is. So kudos to the writer for that.

Verdict: Fail

Sincerely,
Theodore Moracht