Review: Over the Moon by Diane Daniels and a Giveaway

Over the Moon by Diane Daniels
July 29, 2010

Received from Author for Honest Review

From Goodreads:
When seventeen-year-old Tiana moves to Hurricane, Utah, her comfortable world is turned upside down as she traverses the rough waters of adjusting to a small town and new school. Her father insists they were supposed to move here for some unknown, important purpose, and the voice in her head tells her not to argue. After resigning herself to being a miserable outcast, Tiana finds that she is not only accepted by most of the students at her new high school but is also the recipient of unwelcome attention from the opposite sex. But then she meets the mysterious Andrew Martin and is soon Over the Moon crazy about him. Andrew seems to be the perfect boyfriend: protective, tender, good with her parents, and a fabulous kisser. But he also has a few unusual qualities: an intuitiveness that borders on mind reading, a touch that seems to heal, and almost superhuman strength. Tiana marvels at his talents but doesn't seriously consider the implications until she can no longer ignore the clues: Andrew does not belong on Earth. When Andrew admits his true identity, Tiana enters a world previously unknown to her and is plunged into mortal danger as it is Andrew's sworn duty to combat evil, extraterrestrial villains who wish to invade Earth and enslave mankind. Join Diane Daniels for a romantic adventure in Over the Moon, which will take you to a world where the impossible comes to life."

My Review:
When I first came upon Over the Moon I was very excited to see that it was a romance with aliens in it. Since there aren't that many YA alien type books out there, I thought that this book had the potential to be a fun, original romance. I am very sorry to say that this was not the case. The story went way too fast and I didn't feel like anything was believable.

The first problem I had was with Tiana. She starts out feeling insecure about her looks and never stops, even when everyone around her keeps telling her how gorgeous she is and has tons of guys flocking to her, she still doesn't believe it. She should at least feel a little confidence in herself! It was very annoying to have her putting herself down on every page and it just made her very unlikeable. She was also very, very, very dense. When it is obvious that something is up with Andrew, her romantic interest, she puts it off as being peculiar and it takes her forever to figure out that somethings up. The romance progressed much too fast between Tiana and Andrew! Andrew starts calling her pet names after one dance and a couple of classes with her, which was way weird. Their "love" cam off as much too fake and it was very rushed.

Andrew was a very unlikeable love interest. He comes off as stalkerish and acts really creepy around Tiana. He is very one-dimensional and I couldn't see what Tiana saw in him. Sure, he has the hot, surfer looks but zero personality. This made it very hard to continue on with the story, as I really didn't care much about what happened with him and Tiana.

Over the Moon was like Twilight and Roswell combined together in a book, but not at all how I would expect a story like that to be. I loved Roswell and could see hints of it in the book, but Roswell had a much better romance and story. The elements from Twilight were very obvious, which made it very hard to get though the story. There are too many stories out there that try to be like Twilight.

I may have liked this book better had Over the Moon been better written. The writing was almost elementary and it was really off-putting. There were words that were over-used like"exceptionally" which was in there too many times to count. There was also a time when (the book is written in past tense) a sentence in present tense was thrown in, which just grated the editor in me! I think that it may have been a better story had the book been edited a few more times.

I really hate saying negative things about books and giving bad reviews, but I had to with this one. I know that the author worked very hard, but it would have been so much better had it gone though a few more edits. It had the potential to be such an amazing story, but it just wasn't pulled off well. Maybe others with like it better than I did, so I say give it a try if you really want to read a book about aliens, or are looking for a quick, easy read! You may just find it more satisfying than I did!

My Rating:

3 Stars

*With that being said, I will be giving away my copy of Over the Moon to one lucky commenter! If you win, please do come back and tell me what you thought. If you liked it, consider writing a review for it, as self-published authors need those reviews. I'm just sorry that I had to give it 3 stars. Giveaway ends on October 15 and please leave an email in your comment so I can contact you if you win. U.S. Only.*