Rating: 3 stars
Lydia Green is sent a video of her fiancee making out (and more) with his best friend/best man shortly before she's supposed to walk down the isle. Utterly humiliated, she leaves her phone on the bed and does the only thing she can think of, run away. Even in full bridal gear, she manages to hoist herself over the very tall fence at the back of the property and climbs in the open window of the house next door. Fairly banged up and utterly devastated, she collapses in the bathtub and bursts into tears.
Vaughn Hewson's career is currently fairly dead, after his band broke up. He's back in his home town, trying to put his parents' home on the market, before trying to figure out what he wants to do with the rest of his life. He certainly wasn't expecting to find a crying bride in his bathtub, or having to deal with the ensuing drama when the groom's furious family come knocking on the door to figure out why she ran away from the wedding.
Vaughn offers Lydia a place to stay for a few days, until she can get a semblance of order back in her life. Vaughn's sister, who is running a bar with a couple of friends, offers both Vaughn and Lydia jobs while they make up their minds about what they want to do next, and how they feel about each other.
I read the first three books in Kylie Scott's Stage Dive series, but never really felt like going back and reading the fourth one, where apparently Vaughn is introduced. His back story is not really necessary to understand this book, which is clearly going to centre around the Dive Bar, that Vaughn's sister and her friends run. There's a whole bunch of supporting characters introduced, who will clearly be the protagonists of upcoming novels. I will be deeply surprised if Vaughn's sister, currently estranged from her husband and (SPOILER!) accidentally pregnant with another man's child, doesn't reconcile with said husband in one of the future books.
Sadly, this book wasn't all that exciting. First of all, I don't really like romances where the couple fall in love too quickly. I can't be bothered to go back and check, but we are not talking many weeks from Lydia's wedding day until she's clearly oh so very in love with Vaughn. A man so indecisive about what he wants that he actually goes off and leaves her for a while, only to come slinking back, suddenly ready to propose marriage himself. I didn't really believe in this couple much. I did like many of the supporting characters, though, and I appreciated that Lydia was described as a somewhat more full-figured woman than many you meet in romance novels. Also, there was a brief cameo from my favourite character from the Stage Dive books and he always makes everything better.
Judging a book by its cover: There's a Dirty martini in the foreground of the picture (see what they did there? Just like the book title. Much clever. So wow). There's a heavily tattooed guy in the background with what could be a band t-shirt on. I wish they'd tried to match the cover model a bit more with what the hero was supposed to look like (thin, rangy, ginger), but apparently tattooed arms will have to do. It's not a great cover, but then again, the contents of the book aren't exactly thrilling, so I guess it matches up there.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
No comments:
Post a Comment