Series: Standalone
Release Date: July 9th, 2013
It’s spring break, and Tamara Winters would rather stay on campus and read romance novels than flaunt her size-fourteen body on a beach. But her best friend, Ronni, has other ideas.
Against her wishes, Tamara is whisked away to picturesque Maverick Bay, where she’s wrangled into waiting tables with Ronni at the Shore Shack for its busy week leading to Maverick’s Surf Invitational. There she meets fellow schoolmate Xavier Solomon, the Invitational’s organizer and campus womanizer by reputation. From the moment Tamara sees him emerging from the waves like a hero in of one of her romance novels, all she wants to do is run away from the feelings he inspires in her.
Little does she know Xavier has been watching her for weeks now. In fact, after failed attempts at asking her out on campus, he’s concocted a crazy plan: fabricating romantic situations straight out of her favorite books. Xavier quickly realizes that if Tamara gets a whiff of his designs, he might as well spell CREEPER across his forehead. Yet as they grow closer, he’s convinced it’s a risk worth taking. What he hasn’t planned on, of course, is his drug-addicted, alcoholic stepbrother, who decides to join the fun and put a wrench in Xavier’s scheme.
Spring break is proving hotter than Tamara expected. Will her romance novels be able to compete?
• BIPOC characters
• LGBTQIA+ characters
• characters with a disability
And doesn’t address fatphobia
• Alcoholism
• No descriptive sex scene with OW/OM
• Does have the Heroine pushing away
• Does Not have a separation between the Hero and Heroine
• See Ending for HEA status.
• See Possible Triggers for Abuse and OTT sad parts.
Rating: 3.75/5 stars
Okay, Romancing the Bookworm was perfect! Since I’m a bookworm, and I read to the point, where similar to the heroine of this story, Tamara, I get so into books I don’t notice my surroundings, I related to Tamara so much.
The story was written in dual POV of both Xavier and Tamara. Pretty quickly, the reader is introduced to the backgrounds and the semantics of the plot. Xavier has created this grand scheme centred around scenes plucked out from romance books to gain Tamara’s interest. It’s cute and romantic when you think about it, but slightly creepy when you have no idea who the guy is. This whole idea is introduced to us when Xavier’s best friend, Hudson, points out how bad of an idea this is. But Xavier steams on.
Tamara was honestly so awesome! Although I did question some of her decisions towards the end–as I will mention later. She was a certified bookaholic, and it was awesome! However, Tamara has resorted to using her bookworm status as a crutch to escape reality. But what I could genuinely relate to was that Tamara would remember things she learned in books and used them in real life. Although with Tamara solely reading romance books, the things she learned and applied were romantic if you get what I’m saying. But it’s still the same idea. And she did ramble on about learning about some surfer stuff in her books etc. So it relates.
The pace and plot development was mediocre. But the backstory of Zander and Ronnie was delivered excellently since Zander was a considerable problem for Xavier. But I appreciated that Evangelista didn’t allow the secondary characters’ story to overtake Xavier and Tamara’s. She gave the perfect amount of information to make a reader bite and make them so curious they’ll have to read the sequel. I also think there should also be a book on Hudson. And preferable with someone who’s very career orientated, because Hudson has that quarrel with his father about taking over the family business. That would be interesting *wink wink*.
So as you can see, neither of the characters bothered me, and I really appreciated this Spring Break Romance. All in all, it was a good, fast, light read, but the one thing that disappointed me about Romancing the Bookworm was that the ending was so flat. I’ve never actually come across a book where I’ve felt cheated by the end, believe it or not. The end was left so open-ended and not in that philosophical way, but in a, “It can’t end like that” way.
Expect wait …. there’s a ‘The End‘ in BOLD and actually written on the last page. If that isn’t final I don’t know what is.
Ranting now over, I have to say that I’m very interested in the potential sequel regarding Xavier’s step-brother Zander and Tamara’s best friend Ronnie (short for Veronika–and yes it is spelt that way).
I can’t wait to see if Kate Evangelista will follow through with her plans for a novel on Zander and Ronnie, but let’s hope for a more fulfilling ending! And hopefully, we’ll see more of Xavier and Tamara.
