99% Mine by Sally Thorne - Book Review

99% Mine is a romance by Sally Thorne. This is her second novel and after her roaring success over her debut novel - The Hating Game, people were happy to have their hands on this new book. The question is, was this book as successful as her first. Sadly, it was not, with Goodreads having a 3.43-star rating. 

Intentionally, I thought I would adore this book, I have never read The Hating Game, but due to the praises that her first book received, I had a feeling this book would be good as well. I had seen 99% Mine a number of times at bookstores but never actually bought it as I had a ton of books at home to read, but as always, I eventually caved in and bought the book. But the question is, do I agree with the critics about this book or do I feel different?

The book itself is about a woman called Darcy who has loved this man called Tom ever since meeting him when she was younger. He’s back in her life to help restore her late grandmother’s cottage, Darcy wants to leave, but she learns that Tom has actually broken up with his girlfriend and she finally wants to make him 99% hers. 

Here is what I actually liked about the book:

It broke the stereotype of the protagonist being the good girl, while the love interest was the bad boy. Instead, this was swapped around. The protagonist took the characteristics of the bad girl whereas the love interest was the good boy. 

We have Darcy who we quickly learn that she has always had a heart problem - she jokes the reason for this is because of her twin brother tying the umbilical cord when they were in their mum’s womb - but because of this she wants to be able to live life to the fullest but this means she isn’t the best to communicate with her brother and friends. 

And then we have the love interest, Tom, sure he has the style of the bad boy but in my eyes, he takes the role of the cliche ‘good girl’ he’s sweet, kind, wouldn’t hurt a fly. He always wants to give to the twins without expecting anything in return. 

Another thing I liked is that anyone can clearly see the character arch, but not just for the protagonist, you can see this arch for Tom as well. It’s good for a reader to physically see how a character develops because otherwise, it might feel that nothing actually happened in the book. 

However, there was quite a bit that I didn’t actually like, which was:

From the blurb, we learn that Tom is no longer with his girlfriend, and because of this it made me believe that Darcy would find this out quite early on in the book, but I was wrong. She found out in chapter 10 and after 100 pages or so. And the way she found out was the worst way possible, Tom didn’t physically tell her, he mentioned it because he was getting jealous of this other man giving attention to Darcy. Because of this, it made the book have a slow start and I was just waiting for Darcy to find this information out for the novel to actually begin. 

How Darcy’s twin was presented. The first time we hear about Jamie, we learn that Darcy hasn’t spoken to him for a long time. When she finally talks to him, he is very interested in her love/sex life, telling her to stay away from Tom. Sure, a brother should care and be interested in their siblings’ life, but he wanted to know everything and that made me not like Jamie’s personality.

I also couldn’t picture where it was set. For a second I thought this town was on the outskirt of a big city, with one bar - that Darcy worked at - a restaurant, a shop and a few houses. But then I swear there was a moment where a beach was mention… I have to be honest, I was confused. 

Finally, I feel this book could have easily be done the moment Tom came into the picture if they communicated properly. All they had to do was have one talk, where they stated they liked each other and I guess also tell Jamie about it. This can be seen as bad because it makes how the story was told unrealistic.

Overall, I quite disappointed with the novel. I expected to fall in love with it the moment I started to read it, but I was wrong. I don’t know if I would read The Hating Game, I know that her debut novel is amazing and different to this one, but I still don’t know if I will. I guess it just shows that as an author, you can’t just rely on one great book, you still need to create these great novels and that is something very difficult to do.