My Reads: Catching Kate by Dee Kelly

I’d been waiting to read this, wondering how it was going to go. The first book stopped in an odd place a la One to Keep by Tia Louise (you remember that one from a few weeks ago, right?). This book is a novella that takes us back to the origins of the whole story. It’s called Catching Kate: The Acceptance Series by Dee Kelly.

I won’t say where we dropped off the map in the first book, because that would spoil some of the fun. Let’s just say a couple of people are in a sticky wicket. But in Catching Kate, we discover who Kate, Jess, and Michael really are because we learn everything about their background, and we do it through Michael’s voice. And that, to me, was the interesting part.

Because Michael’s a self-serving pig in some ways. He becomes quite the man-whore, but there’s a reason: He’s still hurting from the way everything went down when things came apart for him and Kate. Even so, his behavior was deplorable. Bless his heart, if things could be made worse, he’d definitely find a way to do it. It’s as though he has a relationship death wish, and he carries out the deaths with precision and total thoughtlessness, god help him. It’s hard to have sympathy for him.

But I do – I don’t want to, but I do. I can’t help but. He’s such a broken man-child that I can’t help it. But what makes me angry with Michael is his unwillingness to go back and make things right. Yes, he wants to . . . eventually. I don’t know what he thinks will happen in the meantime. She’ll just sit around waiting for him? He says he’ll honor a relationship if she’s in one, but I really think he had no intention of doing that. He just assumed that if and when he came back, she’d be waiting for him.

And that’s not the case. But things are VERY different from what he’d imagined. No spoilers here – you’ll have to read it – but I found myself feeling sorry for him and being infuriated at him at the same time. You know that old saying, if you snooze, you lose? Yep. Pretty well sums it up here.

I think the thing I liked about this book was Dee’s ability to capture the emotions of a group of small children and teenagers, and especially through the eyes of a boy/man. I was impressed with that aspect of the writing. Now I’m looking forward to the second book in the series, Releasing Kate. I want to see what happens with Vanessa!