Review: Jazz by Cristian Mihai

Title: Jazz
Author: Cristian Mihai
Format: Ebook
Publisher: Self-published
Publish Date: July 28, 2012
Source: I received a copy from the author; however, this did not affect my review.

Why You're Reading This Book:

• You're a hopeless romantic.
• You're a fiction fan.
• You like novellas.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "A heartbreaking portrayal of ambition, treachery, and deception, Jazz tells the story of Chris Sommers, an aspiring writer from New York, who travels to Paris in the hopes of meeting Amber, a mysterious and beautiful woman he has always been irresistibly drawn to.

Chris is soon thrust into a world where everyone seems to be playing a dangerous and corrupt game. Anything is permissible, and even secrets that have been locked away inside the most hidden drawers of the soul will resurface."

My Two Cents:

Jazz is a novella length book all about coming of age and unrequited love. Both growing up and unrequited love are definitely powerful topics. Chris is in love with Amber. To him, she's absolutely perfect. He is sure that they're meant for each other. Unfortunately, Amber is very much engaged to Chris' cousin. That doesn't seem to stop Chris though. He follows Amber to Paris, the city of romance, in order to try to get to know her and to forge some sort of friendship come romance. I think many of us will be able to find something of ourselves in Chris. So many of us have fallen for someone that seems completely unattainable. This is sort of a universal story in that way.

The story itself is good. I am most definitely a hopeless romantic so I love stories like this. I wish that there had been more of a description about why Chris falls for Amber. We see that he is stunned by her. We see that he thinks she's amazing. The "why" factor was missing for me. As you all may have figured out, I also like to know the motivations behind why the characters do what the characters do in different situations. I want to get into their heads. I could not really do that with neither Chris nor Amber, which took me out of the book a little bit.

The writing itself is pretty good. There are some really good turns of phrase in the book. In places, the language was a little stilted but not enough so to take away from the story too much. Mihai has a lot of promise.

Bottom line: A universal tale of unrequited love!