TEST
Dabney: There aren’t a lot of books as anticipated as this one and I think, for me, that was a bit of a problem.
Kristen: Yeah, I had a hard time managing my expectations on this one. I had NONE for The Hating Game, of course, so I sometimes wonder if that made me love it more. So yes, Dabney, I agree.
Haley: I tried to tell myself going in that this wouldn’t be The Hating Game, so there was no way I would like it as much. THG was one of those oddball books that comes along really rarely for me and makes me fall madly in love. The chances of that happening twice were impossible. I just wanted 99 Percent Mine to sound like Sally Thorne and, I think it did.
Dabney: And perhaps that’s part of why I didn’t love it. At all.
Kristen: Haley, did it sounding like Sally Thorne mean you liked it? Because I completely agree it felt like her voice, but man, I did not like this book. The dialogue I found witty and creative in THG felt labored here and I could not stand the protagonists – any of them!
Haley: It actually did. I think I must have liked it more than y’all did because, while it was no THG, I enjoyed most of 99 Percent Mine. It had its flaws, for sure, but I enjoyed the central love story. What was it that you didn’t like about Tom and Darcy?
Dabney: Um. Pretty much everything. I didn’t like them especially as individuals, in large part because they didn’t make any sense to me. I didn’t like their relationship which, again, I didn’t really understand. I found them both to be unnecessarily self-destructive – Darcy borders on selfish as well – and I didn’t think either of them were ready, even by the end of the book, to truly love another.
Caroline: I accept that Darcy was self-destructive, but that’s part of what I found interesting about reading her story. I was interviewing an author about a different flawed heroine, and she made a comment about how literature conditions us to grapple with understanding and loving troubled male characters but our women typically need to be likeable and unchallenging. Since I’ve been guilty of that, it really stuck with me.
Haley: I’d have to agree, Caroline. I think she did have a self destructive urge, but it didn’t make me hate her. I can’t remember how old she and her twin are, but I had a streak in my early twenties where dating jerks, drinking, and acting selfish seemed like great ideas. Now, I will say, one of my bigger hang ups was the twin. The over protective, pushy brother trope almost never works for me. Especially as a device to keep the two love interests apart.
Dabney: There are heroines who are self-destructive, bitchy, cranky, and bossy that I’ve loved. Darcy is not one of them. Her self-destructiveness seemed so self-absorbed which made her a tough love story heroine. I never believed she’d really love Tom as he deserved to be loved.
Caroline: That’s interesting, because the one thing I believed was that she completely and utterly loved Tom!
The thing that worked least for me was the pacing of the beginning of the book. The opening scene, which began with Darcy tending bar and narrated the next day or so continuously, including Tom’s arrival, dragged, especially because the author had to keep coming up with ways to avoid Tom telling Darcy what we all knew about his fiancée, Megan. If those chapters had been split over more time (a phone call with Tom, his arrival and tour, his moving in a week later, etc.), I think it would have been more effective. It seems like a small complaint, but those pages are practically the first third of the book, and it was a big issue for me getting into a reading rhythm.
Kristen: Man, I love how subjective art is. We all saw different things in such a fascinating way. Caroline, I’m glad you pointed out the rhythm issues in the beginning because I think that is one of my key issues: I never fell into a reading rhythm with this. Besides my feelings towards the characters – which are mostly in line with Dabney’s – I just kept feeling unsettled during the reading experience.
Overall, this book was just a miss for me. I found Darcy unappealing, her relationship with her twin to be symbiotic instead of productive, and Tom to be a bit of a meh all around. I’m still struggling to sort a grade, though, because while it didn’t work for me at all I can see how it would work for others. I’ve landed on a C for that reason.
Dabney: I read it less than a month ago and when I think about what I like about it, the only thing that really comes to mind is Darcy’s utterly fabulous best friend Truly. (I have taken to calling myself plush-sized every chance I get.) She and Darcy were lovely together. The novel sparkled every time Truly showed up and that made me even more aware of how the rest of the book did not. And, by the way, I have boy/girl twins who are in their twenties. Darcy and her brother Jamie were just weird – I kept trying to imagine people behaving as they did and I just couldn’t.For me, this book is a C as well.
Haley: I think I liked it more than the rest of you, though I agree the twins came off weird. I’m not a fan of the overprotective brother trope at all. I agree with Caroline that the pacing at the start of the book threw me off, and it took me a bit to get into. Once I did, I enjoyed the dynamic between Tom and Darcy. I really believed she adored him, but thought she had messed up too many times and lost her chance. I also, surprisingly, enjoyed the house renovation element, which I didn’t expect to (although I totally wanted her to keep the house).
I would say it was a B- for me. Probably not a book I’ll go back and reread, but I enjoyed it at the time.
Caroline: I think I’m a B. The challenging nature of the heroine makes this book something I’d read when I’m in the mood for women’s fiction rather than romance. I liked that the characters all had depth – the villainous brother isn’t (Villainous), the perfect man isn’t (perfect), and the disaster of a heroine isn’t (a disaster). We didn’t discuss Darcy’s heart condition much, but I would be interested to hear what people with a health condition think about how the author depicts its impact on Darcy’s behavior and self-image. I think that’s a big part of the reason my grade is so much higher – this book made me think about issues from health to sibling rivalry to unfair expectations of relationship partners. I’d rather have something complex but a bit messy (like Darcy!) than something with fewer flaws that feels bland.
Dabney: I know our readers won’t all agree with us. And I’m hopeful that Thorne has more great books in her. Second novels are often the most difficult to do well–there’s a reason we all know the term sophomore slump. AAR readers–have you read 99 Percent Mine? And if so, what did you think?
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Grade: C+
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 03/02/19
Publication Date: 01/2019
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
Impenitent social media enthusiast. Relational trend spotter. Enjoys both carpe diem and the fish of the day.
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I am so late on this, but I have to add an alternate POV. I loved this book and the kind of edgy, difficult MC. Unlike The Hating Game, which I borderline hated, I found the characters in this book to be vivid and believable – not just cartoons representing Romance “types.” I very nearly didn’t give Sally Thorne a second chance after THG, and I am glad I did.
I had the reverse reaction to others. I had a hard time getting into this book but liked it better as it went on, and enjoyed reading it. I agree the pacing was off and could have used a better editor or at least another pass before publication. But I knew going in THG was going be a hard act to follow. So I ended up liking it well enough even if it wasn’t a homerun.
I forgot to say my take is the closest to Caroline’s comments and I would rate it similarly.
I guess I’m in the minority. I liked this book and the characters but I think the author needs a new editor. Ms. Thorne admitted in the Behind the Book Essay that she was feeling the pressure for her second book after the release after all the praise for The Hating Game. So it’s understandable that she was trying to replicate that kind of writing but her self-imposed crisis got to her. As for needing a new editor, when an author includes epilogues for her new book and her first book, you’ve got to wonder “why weren’t these included in your books at the first go around?”
It also annoyed me, like in The Hating Game, that the author never reveals where the action takes place. We know the author lives in Australia so let her characters live there and tell us!
I found the epilogue for 99% Mine so odd. I get the epilogue for The Hating Game because she believably could have written it after the book was published.
It’s never bothered me you don’t know where the books are set. I actually like the ubiquitousness. #differentstrokes
My understanding is that there was tons of fan demand for a THG epilogue, and since I follow Sally Thorne on social media, I know she responded for a while that she didn’t actually want to write an epilogue for it and wanted reader imagination to do that work. Then she changed her mind, I guess.
I don’t really mind the lack of geographic place in her books. She is very good at creating specific and close settings for “place” that allow her characters to take shape. In THG it was largely the sterile and glass enclosed corporate office space and in 99% Mine, it’s the hollowed out house Tom and Darcy are renovating. Both settings work for me and allow the characters to take center stage.
I’d read that the THG epilogue was actually the original last chapter of the book, cut from the original publication, so she still had it on hand and released it as bonus material. I’m a huge THG fan and was pretty thrilled with it, and I think a big part of it was that it WAS written at the same time as the rest of the novel and thus maintained the same level of characterisation/quality. I wonder if it would have been less satisfying had she written it solely in response to fan demand!
Oh, that’s interesting as I did not get that sense at all from her FB posts on the writing of the epilogue. She indicated that she didn’t write one deliberately, but maybe she did and had it hanging around. I haven’t read it in any case, as it was not included in the arc of 99% mine. Someday I might buy a copy of it, but I don’t want to purchase a new book just for a few pages.
Thank you for the review. I had already bought and started reading the book before the review was published–I almost always wait until AFTER I’ve read reviews–because I just adore The Hating Game and was willing to take a chance. I am not going to finish this book. I will probably take it off my Kindle even. It just didn’t work for me. I definitely didn’t care for the characters, and there was no joi de vivre in it like there was in The Hating Game I am sorry to say.
I loved the first chapter of this book with Darcy tending bar. That book was interesting and a compelling read.
The rest was complete miserable mush. I did not remotely care if Darcy and Tom got together. Their possessiveness (i.e. Tom telling Vince to stay away from Darcy) felt controlling. I didn’t understand Jaime or their relationship. I hated the non-stop metaphors. The writing was overwrought. The house renovation was boring.
Honestly finishing it felt like punishment.
LOL! You are very astute. Absolutely a punishing read! I went back and read/skimmed to the end and it just got worse and worse. Sometimes it can be fun to read a bad book and then write a cathartic review, but this book like you said felt punishing, I should of stopped at chapter five.
Wow! This books is awful, I stopped reading after chapter five. Darcy is definitely not my kind of heroine. The heart thing and the goth thing were not my thing. My best pal has girl/boy twins, this depiction just didn’t ring true. And the stuff about leaving Darcy with her gran so the family could go on ski holidays was crazy, all my guys ski, not me, but I almost always go along.
I’m mostly aligned here with Caroline and Haley on this book. I think “difficult” female characters are held to a different standard than difficult male characters. Darcy intrigued me, selfishness and all, and I wanted her story to try to understand her better.
Unfortunately, the pacing and the plotting were off in this book. It’s hard to get a firm grasp on what this book is about for too much of the novel.
But I did enjoy reading it, and I found Thorne’s voice loud and clear here. I’m looking forward to reading her future books.
I had an arc of this book and missed out on the epilogue too :(
Interesting. I didn’t love The Hating Game as much as everyone else did. I just think other books have done office romance better, for me. So, I hoped that maybe this second book would appeal to me more. If most people are not feeling it, maybe I won’t either … or maybe I’m the oddball who will like it. I think I’ll wait to buy this after I see more reviews across the internets.
Aww. It’s too bad this was a comedown from THG!
I’ll never understand the overbearing brother trope in romance. Reminds me of Sophie Jordan’s contemps. It’s just not appealing.
oh, I just wrote about the annoying older brother trope in my review for How to Seduce a Bad Boy by Traci Douglass! It gets old fast.
I was really disappointed especially as I loved THG and have re read it many times. I agree that THG epilogue was the best thing about it. I had also just finished At Your service which I LOVED and so 99 came off even worse as a result.
The best thing about this book is the epilogue for The Hating Game at the end. I had to set down 99 Percent Mine halfway through because I wasn’t enjoying it. I plan to pick it up again in a few months and give it another try. I appreciate seeing your discussion of the book.
Sigh…. That wasn’t in the advanced copy. And now I feel like I’m missing out!
Finally just read the epilogue. Dreamy. I miss Lucy and Josh.
I’m really sorry to bother but do you mind sending me pictures of the epilogue for the hating game. I have been asking around and people have been really mean. I don’t have enough money to buy the book and my local library doesn’t have it and I’m a big fan of the hating game. I just really want to read the epilogue.