Publisher: Loveswept
Genre: Erotic Contemporary Romance
Release Date: March 12, 2019
Source: Publisher
Buy it here: Amazon | B&N | Kobo
When life gives you curves, you gotta learn how to rock them.
Successful businesswoman Avery Barrows likes her dips and curves, but she’s sick of the haters telling her that she should be ashamed of her body instead of embracing it. Determined to send them a big f*** you, Avery resolves to cut loose during a girls’ trip, hightailing her quick-mouthed, plus-sized self to New Orleans. So, what’s a smart woman with a little extra gotta do to get laid in this town?
Not much if you ask Declan McGinn, the lead singer of BlackSmith. Tall, dark, and tattooed, with a body made for sin, Declan prefers his women as curvy as his guitars. Avery’s sharp tongue and keen mind makes him want her even more.
As they burn up the sheets, Avery and Declan realize this is no one-night (or even one-week) stand. But for all of her bluster, Avery isn’t sure she can handle any more rejection. Besides, Declan has demons of his own. Now Avery has a choice to make: play it safe, or place her trust in the hands of a man who’s as tempting as the devil himself.
A take-no-s*** heroine, a rockin’ hero, and the city of New Orleans are the stars of the show in Moonlight & Whiskey. Tricia Lynne’s debut shows she has a lot of promise as an author – the way she writes about NOLA makes you feel like you’re really there. The city is a vivid, luscious character in and of itself and was unquestionably my favorite part of the book.
I really wanted to like Avery and there are some things I really did enjoy about her. Watching her come into her own in her professional life was fantastic and she has some body image issues that make her relatable. But aside from that, Avery is a bit much for me. She tends to go from zero to one hundred in no time flat, she and her best friend can be crass (and it takes a lot to put me off in that area), and she just felt too over-the-top all the time with very few breathers. Declan starts out the book a pretty hot hero (who doesn’t love a hero who’s a bad boy/skilled lover/kind soul?), but the deeper he and Avery fall in love, the more his demons are brought out. There’s a lot of talk of the light and the dark in Moonlight & Whiskey, especially as it relates to Declan, and sometimes I felt like I was getting repeatedly hit over the head with this particular theme.
The romance is filled with erotic moments, but once the book starts travelling down the light/dark path the passion turns into flat-out drama. There are times Avery and Declan work really well together, but I wanted something more substantial than what was given to make me believe in them as a couple given how quickly they fall in love. A lot of overused tropes start appearing as well in the latter half of the book (the big misunderstanding, pushing someone away for their own good, the heroine who is always overlooked yet two very different kinds of guys fall all over themselves for her, etc.). I don’t want to spoil the story, but many of the obstacles in the way of Avery and Declan’s happily ever after don’t feel organic. There’s a certain character’s interference in particular that just felt shoehorned in for added drama and honestly I just wanted to shake all the characters and tell them to calm the f*** down for five minutes. Call it reader preference, but for me if there’s high drama there also needs to be some balance or the characters start to seem immature and the entire reading experience is like being hit by a two-by-four.
As I mentioned before, Moonlight & Whiskey is Ms. Lynne’s debut and while I had issues with the characters and romance, there really are times in the story her writing was captivating. The way she brought NOLA to life ensures that I’ll definitely want to read another one of her books because I’m interested to see how she grows as an author.
FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
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