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mx_manda 's review for:
Make It Sweet
by Kristen Callihan
Grumpy Honey Pie loves Sunshine Honeybee
Very mild spoilers ahead.
This is my second Callihan romance, and I was pretty happy with it—even if I didn't love it quite as much as Outmatched. Imagine my surprise when I went to borrow it from KU and was given the Audible copy bundled together, so I went with listening to the story. I'm glad I did, because this one may not have held my interest had I read it instead. Make it Sweet is a character driven story rather than an action one, there's a lot of inner monologue, and the scenery rarely changes. (Note: I enjoyed both narrators picked to perform this. They both did a solid job of differentiating their voice enough that I could tell what was dialogue vs. personal thoughts.)
Now, Grumpy Loves Sunshine is my favorite romance trope, so that aspect of this story made me so happy. And Lucian/Luc/Honey Pie/Brick/Oz is...really grumpy, and he's really difficult to love. By design. Like a lot of men, Lucian feels defined by his profession—he is a professional hockey player who retired at 28 due to concussion syndrome and did not want to put his family through the stress and trauma of watching him kill himself with repeated injuries—and without it, what is he, and does he even have a purpose? There's a reason for the statistic that most men die within 5 years of retiring. Without work, they apparently just lay down and die.
He takes a very, very, very long time to get his head wrapped around the idea of change, and he scares easily and regresses a lot in the story. In truth, he reminded me of a lot of SFR and PNR heroines at times, and it's definitely just as annoying when a dude has this set of traits and does the constant flip-flop and dig in.
Everyone else gets super annoyed with him too. There's a point at the end of the story where literally everyone lets him know what they think of an absolutely awful decision he's made, and the petty part of me enjoyed having everyone tell him what an idiot sandwich he is.
Emma is very sweet and understanding to the point that I wanted to shake her a few times. I loved how she bantered, was observant and tried to help without making Luc feel like a charity case, and how she tried to make lemonade out of all her lemons. But I do wish she had a bit stronger of a personality and that some of her random backstory had been focused on more. Like, I'm not sure what we're supposed to do with the information that her father was physically abusive. Other than having a flinch reflex and somehow thinking being an actress would fix her life, it was just left hanging there. And several times in the story she mentioned how much she loves sex, but then during one of the sex scenes we do get, she reveals she always had to act through sex with her partners to give off the image she wanted to? That really doesn't sound enjoyable at all and feels like something missed in the editing process. I'm just saying that it would have been nice to have more focus and polish on Emma as a character. I couldn't help feeling that despite trying not to, she was sort of treated like she's a character she portrays on a show than a person—a relationship theme I enjoyed in this story.
This burns fairly slow because of Luc, but when they finally did get together....I wasn't exactly fanning myself. Enjoyable scenes to read, but I didn't find them particularly hot, and I think it's because I wasn't feeling the chemistry between them. I definitely felt the humor and the playful banter, but I didn't feel sexual tension.
I did have a pretty good laugh at the biggest stereotype of how Americans show that someone is REALLY French: they listen to Édith Piaf, and always, La Vie En Rose.
Overall, I liked this, though I think it needed to be edited and revised some more.
Very mild spoilers ahead.
This is my second Callihan romance, and I was pretty happy with it—even if I didn't love it quite as much as Outmatched. Imagine my surprise when I went to borrow it from KU and was given the Audible copy bundled together, so I went with listening to the story. I'm glad I did, because this one may not have held my interest had I read it instead. Make it Sweet is a character driven story rather than an action one, there's a lot of inner monologue, and the scenery rarely changes. (Note: I enjoyed both narrators picked to perform this. They both did a solid job of differentiating their voice enough that I could tell what was dialogue vs. personal thoughts.)
Now, Grumpy Loves Sunshine is my favorite romance trope, so that aspect of this story made me so happy. And Lucian/Luc/Honey Pie/Brick/Oz is...really grumpy, and he's really difficult to love. By design. Like a lot of men, Lucian feels defined by his profession—he is a professional hockey player who retired at 28 due to concussion syndrome and did not want to put his family through the stress and trauma of watching him kill himself with repeated injuries—and without it, what is he, and does he even have a purpose? There's a reason for the statistic that most men die within 5 years of retiring. Without work, they apparently just lay down and die.
He takes a very, very, very long time to get his head wrapped around the idea of change, and he scares easily and regresses a lot in the story. In truth, he reminded me of a lot of SFR and PNR heroines at times, and it's definitely just as annoying when a dude has this set of traits and does the constant flip-flop and dig in.
Everyone else gets super annoyed with him too. There's a point at the end of the story where literally everyone lets him know what they think of an absolutely awful decision he's made, and the petty part of me enjoyed having everyone tell him what an idiot sandwich he is.
Emma is very sweet and understanding to the point that I wanted to shake her a few times. I loved how she bantered, was observant and tried to help without making Luc feel like a charity case, and how she tried to make lemonade out of all her lemons. But I do wish she had a bit stronger of a personality and that some of her random backstory had been focused on more. Like, I'm not sure what we're supposed to do with the information that her father was physically abusive. Other than having a flinch reflex and somehow thinking being an actress would fix her life, it was just left hanging there. And several times in the story she mentioned how much she loves sex, but then during one of the sex scenes we do get, she reveals she always had to act through sex with her partners to give off the image she wanted to? That really doesn't sound enjoyable at all and feels like something missed in the editing process. I'm just saying that it would have been nice to have more focus and polish on Emma as a character. I couldn't help feeling that despite trying not to, she was sort of treated like she's a character she portrays on a show than a person—a relationship theme I enjoyed in this story.
This burns fairly slow because of Luc, but when they finally did get together....I wasn't exactly fanning myself. Enjoyable scenes to read, but I didn't find them particularly hot, and I think it's because I wasn't feeling the chemistry between them. I definitely felt the humor and the playful banter, but I didn't feel sexual tension.
I did have a pretty good laugh at the biggest stereotype of how Americans show that someone is REALLY French: they listen to Édith Piaf, and always, La Vie En Rose.
Overall, I liked this, though I think it needed to be edited and revised some more.