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A review by klcrabill
Stirring Up Love by Chandra Blumberg
2.0
Stirring Up Love- Chandra Blumberg
(I received this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.)
Simone Blake is a boss, recently coming home to her small town of Hawksburg, Illinois to take over the family BBQ joint Honey and Hickory, but has bigger dreams to showcase several businesses in her small community. Finn Rimes is a BBQ sauce connoisseur, who dreams of providing individuals with opportunities they might not get otherwise with a culinary institute. Both value community but quickly find themselves involved in competition with each other at Hawksburg's farmer market, and then on the bigger scale on a television show. When they are forced to examine if they could work together, they learn whether they could trust each other to bring their dreams to life.
While the premise of the book is pretty clear, I feel like the story just doesn't deliver. Simone as a main character is defiant, not wanting to take any criticism, even if it is constructive, and consistently feels like nobody believes in her and is judging her. She is scorn by her past, especially after losing her job in Chicago when a former coworker sells her out. She does get some redemption by the end of the book, but it just feels like it is too little too late. Finn's characterization, however, was much more complete, which was redeeming, but it felt like most of the book focused on Simone which made it somewhat difficult to read.
The story was drug out and felt very disjointed, with the beginning of the book focusing solely on the famers market and then making a sudden transition to The Executives. I was no aware that this was a sequel book to Digging Up Love, so I am going to read that book and determine if I didn't get the flow because I had not been introduced to the characters before. I was also hoping for a bit more romance in the story; most of the book was characterized by Simone and Finn thinking each other was out for the other one. The ending was cute, but it felt like it was all tied up in the bow because that's what the reader would want.
(I received this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.)
Simone Blake is a boss, recently coming home to her small town of Hawksburg, Illinois to take over the family BBQ joint Honey and Hickory, but has bigger dreams to showcase several businesses in her small community. Finn Rimes is a BBQ sauce connoisseur, who dreams of providing individuals with opportunities they might not get otherwise with a culinary institute. Both value community but quickly find themselves involved in competition with each other at Hawksburg's farmer market, and then on the bigger scale on a television show. When they are forced to examine if they could work together, they learn whether they could trust each other to bring their dreams to life.
While the premise of the book is pretty clear, I feel like the story just doesn't deliver. Simone as a main character is defiant, not wanting to take any criticism, even if it is constructive, and consistently feels like nobody believes in her and is judging her. She is scorn by her past, especially after losing her job in Chicago when a former coworker sells her out. She does get some redemption by the end of the book, but it just feels like it is too little too late. Finn's characterization, however, was much more complete, which was redeeming, but it felt like most of the book focused on Simone which made it somewhat difficult to read.
The story was drug out and felt very disjointed, with the beginning of the book focusing solely on the famers market and then making a sudden transition to The Executives. I was no aware that this was a sequel book to Digging Up Love, so I am going to read that book and determine if I didn't get the flow because I had not been introduced to the characters before. I was also hoping for a bit more romance in the story; most of the book was characterized by Simone and Finn thinking each other was out for the other one. The ending was cute, but it felt like it was all tied up in the bow because that's what the reader would want.