Review Day: Aspen 2-Million Winner Take All

Welcome to the Aspen Blog Tour!  I have a review today of John Morris's novel, Aspen 2 Million Winner Take-All.  To see more information about the tour, click here.

Author: John Morris

Title: Aspen 2 Million Winner Take-All

Rating: 3 stars

The Aspen 2-Million Winner-Take-All (description):

Morgan thought he had it made.  He owned a cozy if dilapidated house in Aspen’s otherwise-fashionable West End, had lots of friends, a great business, threw the best parties in town.

Then his beautiful-but-aloof neighbor Risa sued him for a million bucks-- for killing her dog.  (Seriously.  And he hadn’t even been there.)  She was asking the judge to throw him out of town, too.  (It’s a local tradition.)

For Morgan, the money didn’t matter.  He didn’t have a nickel to his name.  But he couldn’t imagine not living in Aspen.

His only hope: to win a 2-million dollar golf tournament (held on the sly at the local links) and pay Risa off.  Either that or discover her deep, dark secret and blackmail her.  Until his best friend/lawyer suggested Option #3: “Why don’t you just get her to fall in love with you?” (end)

Review:

Aspen 2 Million Winner Take-All is about Morgan, a young male who thinks his life is going too good to be true, when all of the sudden the incredibly gorgeous (described as a Playboy and swimsuit model), yet mysterious, miss Risa shows up.  Risa has this tiny little dog (a Bichon Frise named Tyson) who never stops yapping (not barking... definitely yapping).  One night Morgan has a house party, the party gets out of hand and a pot plant (that is dead) is knocked off an outside balcony and lands directly onto little Tyson, sadly squishing him like a pancake.  When Risa finds out, she mourns Tyson's death for days.  When Morgan confronts Risa to apologize, she freaks out and sues Morgan.... for a million dollars.

Morgan has three options, 1) find the money to pay off Risa, 2) disappear 3) make Risa fall in love with her.  When Morgan hears of a golf tournament with a 2 million dollar prize, he enters it.  Will he win? Will he be able to make Risa fall in love with him? Or will he be able to do both?

The characters from John's novel are creative and entertaining.  From the first chapter, the characters had me intrigued.  I wanted to know more about Morgan and Risa, how the two would interact and see how their relationship (or lack their of) may or may not grow.  The best part about this novel was the fact that it was told from a young male's point-of-view.  It made the story more entertaining (I was actually laughing out loud a few times...I think I had my coworkers scared that I was laughing at myself, heh) and really showed how vulnerable every character can be.  I thoroughly enjoyed waiting for the story to develop and see who would win the tournament.

I liked the overall idea of the plot; however, the novel was a little long.  It was comprised of 37 chapters.  By the end of the novel, I found myself wanting to skip ahead and ignore small details or small adventures.  The sub-plots in the novel were important, however not as intriguing as the main plot.  With that said, I still enjoyed reading this novel.  John did an incredible job with the characters, main plot and developing the entire situation thoroughly.  He wrote this novel with his personal experience in mind, and that made it all the more believable and realistic to imagine.  I was truly transported to Aspen during the novel.

About John Morris:

John Morris lives in Aspen, Colorado, with his loving wife and two wonderful children.  Having worked many of the same cowboy / construction / bartender / ski-patrol jobs as his fictional counterpart Morgan, he can vouch for how easy it is for a good-looking guy to get in trouble there.

Follow John and the Aspen blog tour on Facebook and the tour website.  Aspen 2 Million Winner Take-All can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and the iBook store.  Happy Review and Blog Tour Day!