Review: A Guy Walks Into My Bar by Lauren Blakely
SYNOPSIS:
A sexy, passionate, utterly addictive standalone MM romance from #1 NYT Bestseller Lauren Blakely!
Every bartender should follow one simple rule—don’t go home with the customers.
That’s been easy for me to stick to, until the night a cocky, confident, and sinfully charming hockey star walks into my bar. This sexy athlete is too hard to resist, especially when he makes it clear how much he wants the “sarcastic, witty, hot AF” guy behind the bar—also known as me.
Still, I’m not keen on breaking my own rules since I know where that can lead—no place good.
But when that man makes his case with one bone-searing kiss on the streets of London, I throw resistance out the window.
What could go wrong with a hot, dirty, no-strings-attached fling before he leaves town in five days?
Trouble is, soon our nights together lead to days, to long conversations, to getting to know each other, and to something I never expected—falling ridiculously hard for a man who’s getting on a plane to America when I live a world away.
My life is here. His is there. And no amount of falling or feeling will change that one big problem.
Warning: contains hot hotel sex, loads of dirty talk, PDA all over London, and two sexy, witty, charming alpha heroes…
REVIEW:
I got to be honest, when I first found this book I was super exited. Sexy cover, enticing synopsis, and my last Lauren Blakely read was amazing, so I had high hopes. But this book just fell flat for me. It took me days to finish (I can usually read a book a day) and I just never got into the story. About half way through, I kept wondering why? What was missing that caused me this book disconnect but I powered on, finished the story, and realized why it didn’t suck me in.
I think the main factor that killed this story and took it from a great read to a meh read was that it’s so repetitive. For about 60% of the book, we are spent being told how ‘into Dean’ Fitz is and vice versa. They like/love each other but its all doomed so it doesn’t matter. And this narrative repeats itself over and over again. Add in the factor that instead of being privy to conversations and days spent together, we are only told how they walked and learned about each other’s lives and families. I needed those conversations and character depth because without them, the story had no heart.
It was just a lot of sizzling hot sex, instantaneous chemistry, and lust; but no dimension. The book was plagued with pining, Dean and Fitz were so similar in their thoughts that I forgot whose POV the chapters were in and had to go back to the beginning to remind myself. Sometimes it was to the point where I finished Dean’s chapter and was reading Fitz’s and was like “didn’t I just read this same narrative in the last chapter, almost verbatim?” I just needed more distinction.
Overall, I didn’t hate the story but I never fell into it and fell in love with the characters. Everything felt very lust driven with no depth or heart. Dean and Fitz felt like they never truly connected on an emotional level other than having ‘intense’ sex. In conclusion, this book was a lot of characters’ thoughts but not a lot of characters’ communicating.
LINKS:
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
