jenny867's Reviews > Tinkering with Love

I really wanted to love this book! I was excited for a blue-collar heroine working in a male-dominated industry. I love when tropes with associated gender norms get subverted (in this book, the heroine was supposed to be the “grump” and the hero the “sunshine”). I also love love love the idea of a budding romance during a hellish-sounding mandatory company retreat complete with (ugh) ice-breakers and team-building exercises.

Unfortunately, I found Tully, the hero, problematic. He falls into that 80s/90s romance hero trap of “Hey reader! You’re supposed to think my behaviour is ok because the heroine wants to climb me like a tree and lick my tattoos off, but even though the reader knows that because they have access to her POV, I can’t possibly know that because I’m not a mind-reader therefore I’m in reality no different than any other creep who tries to ‘wear down’ women who have repeatedly shown/told me they are not interested in me.”

It doesn’t matter that the heroine is secretly into him. He. Doesn’t. Know. That.

All he has to go on is her body language (she’s cold/bitchy towards him) and what she tells him. With her words.

A few snippets of things our heroine tells Nice Guy Tully in the first few chapters, in no particular order:
“Let me go.”
“I did not, ever ask you in here, much less want you touching my hair.”
“Get out.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Remove your hand.”
“Not interested at all.”
“Keep dreaming.”
“…fucking let go of my hand.”

And he had the unmitigated gall to offer to have a “talk” with another co-worker he thought was bothering Dawson. She correctly calls him out as a hypocrite to which he replies that he’s “not that kind of guy” and of course he’d back off if he made her “truly” uncomfortable. (I’m sorry but if you don’t back off after being told to back off in several different ways simply because you didn’t think she was serious, you ARE “that kind of guy.”)

Anyhoo.

Other bothersome bits: quality of writing not what I am used to, a lot of "telling not showing" when it came to MCs personalities (I'm supposed to believe Tully is a nice guy because everyone tells me Tully is a nice guy?), heroine who I thought was going to be a curvy badass ended up being insecure about her size (sigh), main characters were immature and didn’t communicate ever (except when Dawson was telling Tully repeatedly to leave her alone… she did communicate that quite well)… and also a unicorn “Very Good at Sportsing” athlete hero who randomly could have had his pick of the NHL or the NFL despite that not really being a thing that could happen based on how those two sports work on a professional level (hello new oddly specific pet peeve I didn’t know I had.)

I would have DNFed this book but it was given to me as an ARC to read so I would have felt bad leaving a review after not having read the whole thing.