Hello, I’m Alison Simpson. Everyone that knows me calls me “The Colorado Girl.” I’ve just arrived home post graduation from a small prestigious liberal arts college on the east coast. I’m living with my “rents.” These are my real biological married for life parents. I also have a 13-year-old brother, Alex. His friends started calling him X a couple of years ago, and it stuck. We are close buds for siblings. I missed X and my parents a ton while going through the college experience.
Hello, I’m Alison Simpson. Everyone that knows me calls me “The Colorado Girl.” I’ve just arrived home post graduation from a small prestigious liberal arts college on the east coast. I’m living with my “rents.” These are my real biological married for life parents. I also have a 13-year-old brother, Alex. His friends started calling him X a couple of years ago, and it stuck. We are close buds for siblings. I missed X and my parents a ton while going through the college experience.
Chapter one: Hello, I’m Alison Simpson. Everyone that knows me calls me “The Colorado Girl.” I’ve just arrived home post graduation from a small prestigious liberal arts college on the east coast. I’m living with my “rents.”
This book very much gives off, "Dear Diary" vibes based on its name. It forms the inner musings of Allison aka The colorado Girl who returns home after college to start her adult life.
Allison was extremely relatable with her desire to find stable employment and keep her head above water in the bills arena post-College. I don't know how many people land their ideal dream job with a boss called Boss who seems mercurial but has good intentions but it made for an entertaining read. Did I mention Allison also has a band- very cool! The colorado backdrop was genius and I felt like I could feel the snow and the fresh mountain breeze on my face.
Allison is trying her best to navigate life balancing work, modeling, performing, and family commitments so an unexpected romance with Dr. Greg was interesting to watch. Their relationship was VERY slow burn and PG. Dr. Greg has his own dark past but there is such a wholesome quality about him.
Their relationship suffered through immense hardships with work commitments as Allison increases her traveling to Korea, family emergencies when a sudden devastating illness surfaces, and their emotional barriers firmly in place. I liked the diary vibe but wasn't so sure how realistic the scenarios were. Allison independently was great but when she was mixed in social situations her identity and character became distorted.
One of the things that struck me as a bit odd was the writing, readers are very familiar with Greg however he is referred to as Greg Hanisch MD throughout the book? It's the same thing with Allison as she is sometimes called by her name and then by Colorado Girl. The tone of the writing also felt a bit inconsistent as sometimes we get "valley" girl and then other times it feels bland and monotone. I really hoped to get more personality, more character, more development from Allison. This is not to say her scenes were bad but they portrayed more about the situations she dealt with as opposed to her feelings on the situation or her thought processes. I also felt like there was a lot of repetition in the writing of descriptions, wording, and phrases. A lot of the scenes feel like fluff and could have been condensed to offer a cleaner, faster read.
Thank you to Reedsy Discovery for providing me with an arc.