Potential. Potential is what A Terrible Love had. The potential for a heartbreaking and heartwarming story to beautifully blend together and make for a engrossing read. Take a ballerina who should be entering into the best years of her life and career, stop her short by the horrific murder of her best friend then add in a steaming hot cup of hunk willing to protect and consume said ballerina and you should have the recipe for something quite delicious.A Terrible Love was not quite baked to perfection though. Jess is a good heroine, she's contained, cautious and secretive and is just beginning to let enough of her walls down to form a couple relationships to help her cope with the tragedy that is her life. She has a couple of friends that banter much like I would expect college girls to, a lot of humor mixed with just enough crassness to keep it interesting.Devin is the mysterious, motor cycle riding hottie with the reputation of being a little 'rough' with the women. He is a bit of a conundrum, uber protective, sticky sweet at times and bossy in the bedroom (or closet or hallway...as the case may be). I liked Devin but had a hard time wrapping my head around him.It isn't really the characters that brought A Terrible Love down for me. It was the plot. It has some gaping holes and major missteps. It is a little difficult to go forward in detail without giving away any spoilers, something I loathe to do. I'll give it a go though. There are characters in A Terrible Love who are not what they seem, you'll most likely catch on to that pretty quickly on. Said characters did not act in any way how I expect they would in real life. At all. Not even remotely. Not that I know many (any) of these type of people, but I just can't see this sort of thing happening. If you want a 'close to reality' contemporary love story, this may not be it. Also, there were strange little clues dropped that never re-surfaced. It gave me the feeling that they were there only to allow the reader to figure out what was really going on. I didn't appreciate it, honestly. Either explain it more thoroughly as the story progresses or just leave it out all together. Let the twist come as a complete surprise, I'm the type of reader who would enjoy that more than just random meaningless clues.The relationship between Jess and Devin gave me pause as well. There isn't much talking involved, Jess basically falls in love over great sex and the protective nature that Devin gives off. She doesn't ever really get to know him. I had a huge issue with this. However, the writing was done well enough that whenever their relationship took a tumultuous turn, I felt it and was thoroughly sucked in. A Terrible Love is a tough one for me to rate. If I go off the fact that I could feel many of the emotions and that the potential for greatness is there, it would be a fairly high rating. But I can't rate on potential alone. So, this may not have been the book for me but I will certainly be checking out the authors other titles in the hopes that she can pull these emotions out of me again in a more solid plot line.
