Publisher: Kensington
Where did you get the book: Review copy from Publisher
Release date: May 29th
There’s a place where the ocean meets the shore, where kicking off your shoes and baring some skin is as natural as sneaking under the boardwalk for an ice cream cone and stolen kisses.
But life isn’t all beach for Shaye Cates, even if her idea of an office is a shady umbrella at the water’s edge, equipped with cell phone and lap top.
Trace Saunders is her upstanding, button-down albeit handsome nemesis. He thinks only of business.
A century-old feud has separated their families. Yet a volleyball tournament and kids’ baseball games draw them together. Beneath the twinkling lights of the ferris wheel, the magic of sea and sand soon sweep away their rivalry.
Suddenly it’s summertime…and the lovin’ is easy.
*blurb taken from author’s official website*
No Tan Lines feels like like a summer read, but I found the story to be very slow with lots of pages of Shaye and Trace antagonizing one another, but with no real tension between them. I just found the characters to be a little predictable with Shaye as the laid back business person, and Trace as the uptight rich owner. I also found it to be too hokey with Shaye’s mood ring turning red with arousal, black when she was moody and so on when she was with Trace. I remember mood rings back when I was a kid where you could get them from cereal packs, and they changed colours due to the warmth that was applied to them from the skin.
I also wasn’t a fan of some secondary characters such as Nicole, who used sex with Trace to get a shop. I wasn’t at all interested in her romance with Shaye’s cousin Kai, and got frustrated with the change in character POV.
There’s no romance in sight long after the halfway point; there’s just lots of talk about the town and the volleyball tournament. Where there is a smexy scene, I didn’t find it to be very emotive or sexy. There was so much going on in the book that that Trace’s and Shaye’s romance suffered.
When Duane, Shaye’s brother arrives, we get his POV also and I find adding a new POV when there’s a quarter of the book to go very strange. So far there’s been Shaye’s, Trace’s, Nicole’s, and Kat’s POV. That is way too many narrators for the length of this book, and I didn’t understand why an editor didn’t pick up on this. And then to start another secondary romance with Duane and Sophie, Trace’s sister, I thought was way too late in the book. With all this happening, there’s hardly any page time with Shaye and Trace.
The secondary storyline with Duane and Sophie was never resolved. Trace’s and Shaye’s romance was quickly sped up at the end with them getting getting married with both families not approving. It’s obvious that Duane and Sophie have been set up for the next book. Overall, I thought the plot was a mess with too many character POV’s. too many secondary storylines, and a very weak romance with Shaye and Trace.
I give No Tan Lines a D.
I love Kate’s books and cannot wait for this one.
Thanks for the review, this one is not going to find itself on my wishlist.
I think if the number of narrators had been cut down, this would have been a much more enjoyable book.