Review: Smooth - A Love Story

Smooth - A Love Story by Tracy Ewens
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Patrick McNaughton and his three brothers run a craft brewery and pub. Whilst Boyd is the brewer and Cade is the bartender, Patrick is the salesman, the one who gets their beers stocked in bars and restaurants in other towns and cities. Although of course he is now a handsome, charming man when he was at high school he had a brace, glasses and was extremely tall and thin (Luckily he gave up playing a musical instrument or he would have entered total nerd oblivion), this has left him with a bit of a complex about always winning.

Aspen Pane is the whip-smart office manager for the Brewery. Patrick, or Trick, has been infatuated by Aspen since they were at school together but she has never thought of him that way at all. In fact, Aspen's father's desertion at an early age and her mother's subsequent chasing after one unsuitable man after another has left Aspen opposed to love and romance. So much so that she only dates men she isn't attracted to! Because Trick doesn't think he can succeed with Aspen he hasn't tried - he's all about the winning.

Then one day a series of coincidences mean that Trick and Aspen fly together on a business trip, Trick is terrified of flying and a combination of booze and anxiety medication lead him to confess a little too much information to Aspen. From then its merely a matter of waiting to see whether Aspen can overcome her antipathy towards mad, impulsive love and whether Patrick can ever put himself out there and make the first move.

I'll be honest, I'm suffering from a head cold so some of the finer nuances of the interactions between Patrick and Aspen may have passed over my head but honestly they talked in so many similes and metaphors that I got totally lost and, frankly, I think Tracy Ewen did too. There was a lot of talk about diving into the deep end, inching into a kiddie pool, being a good swimmer etc - one of them in my ARC got so muddled up that Aspen wondered what would happen if Patrick was a strong swimmer too when I think she was meant to worry if he was a non-swimmer too.

Frankly at 68% through I thought the two of them would never stop talking themselves out of everything, there's slow burn but this was ridiculous. If it hadn't been that I didn't want to start 2018 with a DNF I would have been tempted to give up at that point.

I must stop using Women's Fiction as a disparaging comment, particularly in relation to books by this author, but this does strike me as belonging to that genre. Lots of talking and examining of feelings and trying to have witty banter like the characters in the old TV series Moonlighting (Bruce Willis as a young man) and I just wanted to scream at the characters to just bloody get on with it. Also Patrick's brothers and Aspen's friends are all so flippin' insightful, yet I am willing to bet good money that if I read their books they would each have been just as clueless about their own relationships. Also, whilst I get the sibling cruel to be kind attitude, Aspen's friends would very shortly have ceased to be friends of mine if they didn't butt out of my private business, sheesh.

Apparently this is the 10th book in the Love Story series, I have also read the eighth book Exposure - A Love Storyand made some similar comments.

So,, I think you can tell from my review that my cold has made me a bit tetchy but overall I found the book was overlong for the plot. I would have wanted more things going on (or at least to see more of what was going on in the background) rather than the intense navel-gazing that went on and on.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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