Driven to Distraction
by Olivia Dade
Synopsis:
IF THE BOOKMOBILE’S ROCKING . . .
Constance Chen is not the demure kind of librarian. Sure, her high-horsepower ride is Big Bertha the Bookmobile, but Con swears a blue streak, does her own home improvement, and wears steel-toed boots. She has a tight circle of friends, a demanding, beloved sprawl of a Chinese-American family, and a strict hookups-only policy when it comes to men. Her life is just how she wants it. Except for one maddeningly sexy footnote.
Sam Wolcott, her friend’s baby brother and the library’s IT star, has been throwing sparks with Con since he moved to town. To everybody else, he’s a thoughtful, sensitive sweetheart. To Con, he’s a cantankerous pedant, because if they don’t fight nonstop their clothes will spontaneously combust. Sam needs a commitment Con won’t—can’t—give. And neither of them will chance their hard-won bonds for pure lust.
Too bad Con and Sam have a whole week in a very tiny, very private space to sustain their dumb arguments. Alone. What happens in the Bookmobile might take their resistance right out of circulation . . .
Review:
This one had such a strong start–the bookmobile librarian and the geeky IT guy who have all kinds of sexual tension going on, both believing that they can’t be together (he’s the brother of one of her best friends and younger than her; she doesn’t want/have time for a relationship) competing against each other for department of the year at the library…at the beginning, this was all kinds of fun. It was a bit frustrating that Con was so dead set against any kind of a relationship beyond the purely physical, but Sam put his all behind changing her mind on that point, and it was great to see him bring her around to the idea. Oh, the presents he leaves for her–made me melt every. Single. Time. He plays hockey, and she cheers him on using hockey terms that are perfectly valid but manage to sound totally dirty at the same time 🙂 So fun.
But…
The major conflict in their relationship changed everything for me. First, it took them 80% of the book for them to figure out what their conflict was…I really have a hard time believing that they would have gotten to the point that they did without having the talk that they clearly needed to have before committing to a future together, but they didn’t. They actively avoided it, both just assuming what they wanted to believe about the other until they couldn’t believe it anymore. Then they broke up. Then they reconsidered, and of course got back together in the end–with another really big
BUT…
It was really hard to buy the way this whole issue was resolved. One person completely turned around on their position, thanks to a single conversation and the events of a weekend, and the other person…didn’t. They pretty much said, “Yeah, I suppose I could possibly, maybe change my mind eventually in the far distant future, but I strongly doubt it.” As much as I had wanted them together early on (and there were more awesome gifts involved in the reconciliation!) the way they managed it in the end left me unconvinced that they really should be together, which made me sad.
Still, I love the idea of a series built around public librarians. How awesome is this? I’ll definitely try some of the other books in this series–the one excerpted at the end, book 4 Ready to Fall, looks cute–in the hopes that this one was a one-off. The series characters all work together and are friendly with each other, and so the MCs of the other books were in and out of the pages of this one. Not having read the other books yet, I wasn’t familiar with their stories but still enjoyed seeing their relationships here with Con, Sam, and each other–as a standalone, it worked okay; those who have read the other books, though, will definitely enjoy seeing the stories of those librarians continue here.
Rating: 3 stars / C
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.
