A review by thestorydragon
Work in Progress by Kat Mackenzie

adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

 1🌶️ 

Pros:
✨Audiobook Narration
✨Secondary Characters
✨Fun Concept

Cons:
✨Alice Cooper (Protagonist)
✨Underdeveloped / Flat Characters
✨Miscommunication Trope
✨Contrived Conflict
✨Telling instead of Showing 
 

Oof. This was problematic. I’m going to start this out with the things I really enjoyed about the novel. (Basically, all the elements that had nothing to do with the FMC.)

The concept here was fun. A literary tour through the UK led by a sassy, attractive Scottish-man and accompanied by a gaggle of old ladies. The secondary cast was hilarious (if surface level) and made for a fun atmosphere. Robbie, the MMC and love-interest, was genuine and kind and bursting with character. I adored him, and wish we had gotten more emotional intimacy beyond the back-and-forth banter between him and Alice. The inclusion of UK culture (as someone from the United States) was interesting, and I enjoyed the pockets of history as the group visited different locations.

Unfortunately, our FMC, Alice Cooper, was wholly unlikeable. She was outright mean to Robbie. And, yes, this did lead to some bits of banter that had me cackling, but I’d say it’s a 60/40 mean-to-funny ratio. I didn’t understand where her hostility came from. They had a bad first encounter, but it felt disproportionate to her barbs.

The entire conflict between Alice and Robbie hinges on the classic, and hated, miscommunication trope. And this is where I would have DNF’d if I didn’t need to finish this for a reading prompt. Alice overhears Robbie on a phone call, and based on the conversation, she thinks he has a girlfriend. What should have happened at that point, especially based on Alice’s backstory of being cheated on by her fiancé—the inciting incident for her spontaneous trip to the UK—is that she should have called him out for kissing her and flirting with her. A simple: “It’s inappropriate to hit on me when you have a girlfriend”.

Except, this didn’t happen. She just blubbered around, told him to keep his distance without any explanation, then switched tune and said they should be friends, all while still fantasizing about him even as he continued to low-key flirt with her. 

Alice is confrontational to a fault. It made no sense that she didn’t immediately rebut his advances and spit fire at him for being a cheater.

Which leaves me with two huge issues:

  1. This whole miscommunication could have been resolved in a single sentence.

  2. Alice had skewed morals and kept ogling a man who she 100% believed had a girlfriend, which goes against the basic logic of her character personality and development.


When Alice finally does realize that the woman Robbie spoke to was his mom, and that he never had a girlfriend, she’s upset he didn’t pursue her harder.
 Excuse me, girlie, are you saying that you’re upset he … respected your boundaries? Listened to you and agreed to do what would make you feel more comfortable? 

Baffled. 

She acted more like a high school teen throwing a nonstop temper tantrum than she did a 30-year-old woman.

There were other faults. Telling instead of showing. Lack of character development. An FMC and MMC that felt flat. Irrelevant plot points. Etc. But those paled in comparison to how much I loathed Alice. I spite-read this to fulfill my reading prompt.

And what stinks is that there were pieces of the book I truly enjoyed. If Alice Cooper had been cut from this story, it would have been enjoyable. Give me more Robbie and his band of geriatric ladies trooping across the UK. That would have been 100 times better than this.

I listened to the audiobook, and Angela Dawe made this as bearable as she could. Great voice distinction between characters, including juggling the accents!