At Last by Lynn Galli

At Last by Lynn Galli

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Quick thoughts:
1) re: ‘Learn how the Virginia Clan came to be and watch as Willa and Quinn settle into their new life together.’ & re: ‘Virginia Clan Book 0’ – This is a book that covers something like 12 and a half years and not all of that time is shown, some is leapt over. And while a big chunk of time that is skipped is from the end of the book to the epilogue section, not all of that missing time occurs in that in-between section (no, that’s only 7 of the years). The book starts before the Virginia Clan series, proceeds through the years those books occur, and then ends afterwards.

a) That sentence I quoted above, the ‘Learn how the Virginia Clan came to be and watch as Willa and Quinn settle into their new life together’ is very misleading. You, the reader, do not actually ‘get to learn’ anything (that's putting it strongly, certain things are learned, like how Jessie and two others were friends of Quinn's, and Willa got pulled into their circle (though that's something tossed out years after the joining of Willa into the circle)). While the book starts before the clan got together, one of the ‘leap forwards’ occurs in such a way that the clan is already formed once the ‘leaping forward in time’ ends. I’m not actually sure who all is considered part of the Clan. Some have their own books, but some don’t. To a certain extent, one of the things I was looking forward to seeing, one of the interesting aspects of that could have been here, if the book had actually included a 'learning about the formation', would have been finding out why those two really rough and disagreeable people, who no one likes, joined the group – especially since they don’t a have a book of their own. I mean, most of these people are deliberately ‘misseen’ by the group. They probably are as well.
- Jessie the player who might not be
- Willa the robot, but isn’t
- M who can’t string two words together and is very quiet – unless you take one of her classes, or one of the two people she is closest to
- Etc. etc.
- Des the rough bitchy type who . . . what? Is really a rough bitchy type? Is actually a cuddly bear? Is actually even ‘worse’ than a rough bitchy type? We will never know.

b) While it is true that this book starts before the first book in the series, it is also try that it ends after the last, current, book in the series. And therefore certain information will be revealed that those who have not read this series and do not desire to be ‘spoiled’ should not read. Mostly in the epilogue section, but things dribble out here and there elsewhere in the book.

2) Sex both occurs and is graphically described. Feelings occurred and stuff.

To reiterate: while the description makes this book appear to be a prequel, it isn’t really. You don’t actually see the formation of the ‘Virginia Clan’, and you learn stuff that is ‘spoiler-y’ for some of the other books in the series. This is better read after the other books have been read.

Oh, and it is also an expanded version of ‘Finally’ in that ‘Finally’ short story collection. Though that’s stated up front in the book. And I’ve not read that Finally book so I can’t really comment on that aspect. Also – I’m glad now that I hadn’t read that book, because two of the stories have been expanded to full length books now (this book and Out of Order), so I’m happy to be able to experience them fresh.

Rating: 3.67

March 7 2017



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