Sweet River Publishing, $3.99
Contemporary Romance, 2021
Mick Breeden came back to his hometown Prairie Vista, fresh from having served in Afghanistan, to take care of his now dead army buddy Steve’s widow and her three kids.
Indeed, April Murdock’s Long Road Home opens with him posing dramatically in the landscape and dumping a whiny long internal monologue about how he doesn’t belong in town even one month in, how he misses Steve, how he is talked into by his old friend to buy that friend’s crappy Honda that breaks down at the start of the story, how he’d like to go back to city, and…
Are whiny men the new hot trend in romance? I confess I don’t follow the genre trend as closely as I used to, so I do wonder. I have to say, though, that the hero certainly doesn’t make a good impression on me!
Despite having lived in this tiny town for a month, he later only bumps into Hayley Samms, who was a few years behind him in school, somehow having missed her when she has never left this place all her life.
Our heroine practically walks out of the handbook of tired old Welcome to Hallmark clichés:
- Runs and works at a diner
- Has lost a boyfriend in a tragic accident and is confident that she will never love again
- Has a mousy best friend that will never overshadow her in terms of look and who only lives to cheer her on
To be fair, Mick isn’t winning awards for originality either, as he’s the composite of the former army guy and former bad boy in town all smushed together.
So, what happens in this story. Will Steve’s widow put up a fight to ensure that her free money and cook and emotional support not-boyfriend will not be stolen by some hussy that runs the local diner? Will Mick start being an asshole, using his angst as an excuse for his actions? Will Hayley get pregnant as a convenient means to accelerate the romance?
Actually, no. On one hand, I like that there is a refreshing lack of clichés beyond the main characters.
However, this story also doesn’t really have much else to keep my attention. It’s a pleasant story of people in a smalltown doing things, but everything feels mundane and uneventful. Problems feel minor and any issue is quickly resolved, and everyone is so agreeable with one another even when they are supposed to be in some kind of minor tiff. Reading this thing is like watching raindrops causing ripples on a pond: pleasant for a few minutes but quickly becomes rather monotonous and I find my attention shifting to other things.
Sure, if real life were like this, that’d be great. This is fiction, however, and some well-handled emotional conflicts could have allowed the characters to grow and show some depths. Instead, Mick and Hayley along with their friends come off as nice but shallow characters going through the motions of reenacting that same Hallmark romantic drama that I have seen many times already.
So, Long Road Home is in many ways a pleasant cozy read, great for readers that want a romance that is peaceful and uneventful, but I can’t help feeling that it has never left the gate in the first place, much less gone anywhere.
