Did I Mention I Love You? by Estelle Maskame

Title: Did I Mention I Love You? (DIMILY #1)

Author: Estelle Maskame

Publisher: Sourcebooks FIRE

Release Date: December 1, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Love is everything but expected.

Eden Munro came to California for a summer of sun, sand and celebrities—what better way to forget about the drama back home? Until she meets her new family of strangers: a dad she hasn’t seen in three year, a stepmonster and three stepbrothers.

Eden gets her own room in her dad’s fancy house in Santa Monica. A room right next door to her oldest stepbrother, Tyler Bruce. Whom she cannot stand. He’s got angry green eyes and an ego bigger than a Beverly Hills mansion. She’s never felt such intense dislike for someone. But the two are constantly thrown together as his group of friends pull her into their world of rule-breaking, partying and pier-hanging.

And the more she tries to understand what makes Tyler burn hotter than the California sun, the more Eden finds herself falling for the one person she shouldn’t…

Did I Mention I Love You? is the addictive first book in Wattpad sensation Estelle Maskame’s DIMILY trilogy: three unforgettable summers of secrets, heartbreak and forbidden romance.

There are always those books you see floating around the Internet and you know about them without really knowing much about them. That’s kind of how I felt about Estelle Maskame’s Did I Mention I Love You? and I was curious enough to want to read it. And it ended up being a story I enjoyed.

Normally Eden Munro would be looking forward to spending the summer in Santa Monica, especially if it means escaping the drama at home. But a summer in Santa Monica means spending the summer with her dad, the dad she hasn’t seen in three years after he walked out on her and her mom. But it’s not just with her dad. It’s also with her new stepmom and three new stepbrothers. Not exactly what Eden had planned for her summer. When she gets to Santa Monica, Eden quickly gets taken in to a group of friends, one that includes Tyler, the stepbrother she can’t stand and who she’s constantly fighting with. Eden becomes determined to understand what makes Tyler so angry all the time, what makes him tick. But the more Eden finds out about Tyler, the more time she spends with him, she realizes that she’s doing a lot more than just figuring him out. She might even be falling for him…and since he’s her stepbrother, that’s a whole lot of complicated.

For the last few months, I’ve been seeing Estelle Maskame’s Did I Mention I Love You? kind of floating around the Internet. I vaguely knew about it, that it was another book that had started out on Wattpad. But I didn’t really know what the story was about, other than it was a contemporary romance. And really, that’s kind of all I need to know about a story to make me want to read it. So I went in to Did I Mention I Love You? with a completely open mind. And I’m willing to admit that at first I wasn’t sure how to feel about this story. It took a while for me to click with Eden, which made it hard for me to get into the story. And I don’t think I never fully got into the story until close to the end. But that didn’t stop me from compulsively reading it. I just had to keep going. I couldn’t stop. Where the story kind of lost me was on the romance. Let me preface this by saying that I have no issue with stories that involve stepsiblings getting together if they haven’t grown up together. But I had trouble getting invested in this relationship despite wanting it to happen. I just had complicated feelings about the romance. And having read the description for the sequel, I’m afraid that it’s going to keep up in the next book.

As I’ve already mentioned, it took me a while to click with Eden. For the first part of the book, I just felt like she complained about everything. She came across as judgemental, which in itself is not a problem, but it felt like she as judging and complaining about what the girls she was hanging out with were doing without ever really saying anything about why she didn’t like it. Eventually that went away and I was able to enjoy Eden as a character. And I was intrigued by Tyler. Much like Eden, I wanted to know what made him tick, what made him so angry all the time. And I loved when his softer, more vulnerable side came out. That one particular scene with him at the end of the book? My heart pretty much cracked. I just wished I could have seen more of that Tyler and less of the constantly angry and pissed off one I saw for a good chunk of the book. I can only hope that the softer, more open Tyler is the one that’s going to be in the sequel.

Though I didn’t agree with everything in Estelle Maskame’s Did I Mention I Love You? I still really enjoyed reading this story. And even though I might be a little apprehensive about it, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens between Tyler and Eden in Did I Mention I Need You?