Unattainable by Jamie Schlosser

Jamie Schlosser’s ‘Unattainable’ is an easy read, while looking like it’s custom-written for disgruntled readers who have at some point in time or other, found fault with the lack of grovelling, with gendered double-standards especially during separations and with forcing conflict for the sake of prolonging the story.

The result of these preset conditions is a safe, uber-sweet story of 2 characters who’d found each other again by coincidence and somehow resolved their unhappiness with each other (possibly too) quickly. Much of it thereafter, was an angst-free upward tick of how both juggled their budding careers and their own blossoming relationship.

To read Corrie and Aiden rediscover each other and be each other’s firsts in so many ways was nonetheless enjoyable—free of the usual prolonged, rocky period where both parties wonder about the other people they’ve dated during separation—, interspersed with odd moments that felt a bit more farcical than funny to me.

But entertainment (mine, at least) comes out of conflict and it was ‘Unattainable’’s predictability, its quick resolution of problems in the first few chapters after Corrie/Aiden’s reconciliation and Corrie’s speedy agreement to give coupledom a go again despite her reservations that pulled the book into a lull-period for me. I wonder if it would have worked better if there were a few more troughs and peaks before Corrie/Aiden really got together, though it’s probably a delicate balance that is hard to achieve.

Still, there’s an unfailing, rosy optimism that colours the entire storytelling if it’s your kinda thing but speaks less to my own brand of cynical scepticism: a kind of sense that love really will keep them together in the years to come, a finality that there’s no other travails this couple would face in their romantic lives.