Review: Tap - A Love Story

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

Two and a half stars.

I was a great fan of Tracy Ewens' books and went through a spate of reading them and requesting ARCs on NetGalley so when this book was on offer at 80p I jumped to add another to my collection, even better one of my reviews of a previous book said I was keen to read Cade's book.

Cade McNaughton and his brothers own Foghorn Brewery and he runs the bar. Recently his brothers have all found love and he is increasingly feeling like the odd man out, viewed as the good-time boy by his brothers and women when actually he is looking for his own white picket fence, wife, kids and marriage. Things culminate when an ex posts a picture of Cade asleep and naked on the pub's instagram, it attracts all the wrong kind of attention and Cade's brothers are not impressed.

Sistine Branch is the exact opposite of the women Cade dates. They are all about the bog hair, make-up, tight clothing and a good time. She is the owner of a knitting shop with old lady taste in clothes. She and Cade are friends, he is teaching her backgammon and it's a huge case of opposites attract. Obviously she is attracted to this ridiculously good-looking guy but they also share a love of words and games and have great conversations. For his part Cade realises that Sistine is one of the few women, maybe the only one outside his family, that he has real conversations with.

So far so good right? Okay the old-lady knitting shop thing is a bit cliched but I could run with that and I love a good opposites attract romance.

But Sistine has a secret. It's one of those annoying secrets that the reader doesn't find out until three-quarters of the way through the book. By that time not only was I bored of the secret that dare not say its name but when the big reveal came I was massively disappointed because frankly it was so much less exciting than I had imagined and goodness only knows why Sistine felt it was a guilty secret.

I reread one of my previous Tracy Ewens reviews to see why I liked her so much, and I quote:

she writes engaging characters with real life problems and memorable minor characters. There was angst, but not too much, humour and good plot development

Sadly, in this book I found none of the above to be true, Sistine felt like a caricature of a quirky, offball, misfit all she needed was a graphic novel habit to hit the geek girl jackpot. Cade definitely seems to categorise women as Madonnas and whores which is problematic for me, I really hate that these guys never marry the women they've been happily banging for years and it troubles me that female writers perpetuate this view.

Sadly this was a bit of a swing and a miss for me.

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