Liz Alden, $3.99, ISBN 978-1-954705-05-0
Contemporary Romance, 2021
Marcella Baresi joins the yacht Themis as its new chef, and life is perfect. Doing what she loves best, while on a paid trip around the beautiful islands in the Mediterranean sea… what could be better? Well, maybe if Sebastian Alvarez would somehow fall overboard, perhaps, as he and Marcella had a history that ended with her losing her job. The TL;DR is that they had sex, she got fired while he wasn’t, and that hurt a lot.
Our heroine actually got this gig based on Seb’s recommendation, which I’d think would earn him some brownie points with her, but no. For some silly reason Marcella assumes that he isn’t part of the crew, and feels somehow misled and lied to when she learns that he is indeed one of the deckhands. Hence, the rest of the story sees her being very childishly and pettily at him while accusing him of being the source of negativity on the yacht.
I commented in the past reviews of the titles in Liz Alden’s Love and Wonderlust series that there was a lack of conflict that made those stories tad boring. Well, here I get a conflict that lasts quite a bit, and lucky me, it’s perpetuated by the main characters’ refusal to communicate like adults. The fault lies mostly in Marcella, because for some reason, the author has Seb being polite and even kind for the most part. I wonder if the author realizes just how much worse this makes Marcella in comparison to Seb’s general controlled responses to our heroine’s histrionic hissing.
Sure, I understand the need to be petty—one has to find a way to let out all those pent-up feelings, after all—but the constant bickering and back and forth especially early in the story only makes the heroine come off as an insufferable wretch, and she’s the first person narrator of this story. Oh joy, indeed.
Even when things seem to settle down, the author has both characters constantly interacting with everyone else but one another. As a result, the conflict arising from their history feels unnecessarily drawn out, as if the author had no idea what to do with her story if this conflict were to be resolved in a grown-up manner by her characters. The whole conflict feels padded, artificial, and oh so annoying to follow because I just want these two people to either talk like grown-ups for once or do everyone a favor and throw themselves overboard.
I’m sure there are some lovely scenery and depictions of life on a luxurious yacht in The Second Chance in the Mediterranean, but I’m too busy getting exasperated by the main characters to enjoy these things. It’s like being stuck in a tour group with way too many screaming kids and no means to gag them up so that I can really enjoy the view. Next time, on a romantic getaway, please let’s just leave those kids behind.
