
TEST
Tracy Ewens adds a final chapter to her McNaughton Brothers series and another to her A Love Story series of contemporary romances set around Petaluma with Tap: A Love Story.
Cade McNaughton of the Foghorn Brewery McNaughtons is footloose and fancy free. Not quite a player, he’s nonetheless enjoying the ladies who romp the fields of Petaluma, California. The baby of the family, he’s often talked down to by his brothers – who consider him an immature and reckless fool – but he has a talent for pairing food and beer, which makes him indispensible to the family’s side business, a pub/restaurant called The Tap House, where he often tends bar and runs the back end. Unfortunately there’s a downside to all that feminine attention – such as when someone puts a picture of Cade lying naked in bed up on Instagram and hashtags the bar’s name in the post. The postee happens to be Cade’s ex, Lauren, who continues to cling to their friends-with-benefits relationship, if only as a way to make her current boyfriend jealous. Cade’s whole family blames him for the incident, but a friend believes him when he says it’s not his fault.
The wonderfully-named Sistine Branch is hoping to convince a crochet and knitting expo to use her shop, Knitterly, for their annual meeting, which would save the business and pay for the necessary refurbishment of the premises. Hoping to ask Foghorn to sponsor the event, she meets with Cade and they begin a flirtation which is, unfortunately for Sistine, so distracting that they never actually get around to discussing business. Still in desperate need of financial help, she instead turns to her viperous friend Melissa, the wife of a senator. Bored Melissa is willing to lend Sistine the money, but attaches some conditions to the loan that make Sistine pretty uncomfortable. (A plot-point the narrative ends up throwing away, making it rather pointless).
The more time Cade spends with Sistine, the more deeply convinced he becomes that he should leave bachelorhood behind. But with man-hungry Lauren still angling for Cade and the pressure of Sistine’s agreement with Melissa bearing down on their shoulders, can their relationship survive?
Tap is amusing in a few ways. I liked Sistine’s neurosis, her love of detective stories and her true feeling for the women who surround her – all of Cade’s sisters-in-law adore her for a reason. I liked Cade’s willingness to change. I liked the cozy small-town sitcom feel of the general novel.
But a lot of plot points kept popping up to irritate me like pins left in a half-basted outfit; for instance – if Sistine’s shop is such an in-progress wreck with no running water and fritzing electricity, why does she persist in holding classes there?
Cade is a nice guy who’s attuned to his emotions; he cries and isn’t afraid to cry, which made me enjoy him. But he chooses to get together with Sistine because – well, she’s pretty, she’s there, and his brothers are getting hitched, so why shouldn’t he? That’s never a good reason to get married, and while I liked the way he and Sistine bantered and flirted it was hard not to envision much of the relationship as Cade panic-rushing into it because That’s The Way He’s Always Heard It Should Be. At least Sistine’s constant ability to compare any color to a shade of yarn is… well, moderately amusing.
Here’s the biggest problem with the book: the Melissa/Sistine plot makes next to no sense and is clearly only here to throw in a third-act roadblock for Cade and Sistine. It’s one of those subplots that dies an immediate death under the scrutinous weight of logic. If Melissa is so concerned with keeping her fingers clean and looking the part of an innocent woman with a spotless senate-approved personality, why hold Sistine to an agreement she could easily disclose to the press? But no, Sistine goes along with it because Melissa loaned her money for her business, and it provides a convenient reason for Sistine to push Cade away near the end of the book. The secret she and Melissa are keeping is absolutely ridiculous and wouldn’t have a negative impact on Melissa in the press; nor would it be much of a deal to anyone who’s old enough to have stopped believing in Santa Claus.
It’s the details that drag Tap down. The devil lies in ‘em, and there’s a wee host of demons that keep McEwens’ charming prose from reaching its full potential.
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Grade: B-
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 15/12/18
Publication Date: 07/2018
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.