This romantic comedy has a delightful romance but is light on the funny.
When Violet McGinn’s mother needs surgery, Violet flies across the country to help her out and is roped into temporarily taking over her mother’s business.
Violet’s mother is a psychic.
Violet is not.
Fortunately, her mother’s clients seem to broadcast their fears and insecurities, and she can usually figure out how to use pop-psychology to help them out. Unfortunately, some of her advice has totally unintended consequences.
Right next door to Violet’s mom’s psychic studio is a bar that hosts male strippers on weekends. Bar owner Drew Watson doesn’t believe in psychics, but he certainly believes Violet is hot and finds himself making random excuses to be around her.
I really liked the romance that developed between Drew and Violet. She’s an uptight career woman – just like his ex-wife. He’s a straight guy who owns a male strip bar – putting him in the category of “abnormal” that Violet has avoided since leaving her mother’s house.
At times, their relationship provided the laughs I was expecting, like in this scene where they find themselves on a double date (each of them is dating someone else, not each other), and it soon becomes clear to Violet that Drew can’t remember the name of the bimbo he’s with. She drops something on the floor and the two of them duck beneath the table for a chat.
“You don’t know your date’s name?” she hissed in his ears.
Her hair tickled his nose, and Drew fought the urge to drag her down on the carpet and grope her under the table.
Classy, dude. Really classy.
“Help me out,” he whispered back.
“Me?”
“I just need a clue.”
“No kidding.”
“Her name’s been on the tip of my tongue all night, but I can’t remember.”
“Maybe you should be more selective in how you use the tip of your tongue.”
But I often found the parts that were supposed to be funny just didn’t make me laugh. Too often, the humor relies on obvious gags, shallow secondary characters, and pratfalls.
Plus, the conflict between Drew and Violet really wasn’t strong enough to sustain my interest through the length of the book.
While the romance was lovely, the story and most of the characters were too shallow to engage me.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Heat: Hot
Available March 6 from Sourcebooks
Have you read an early copy of Believe It or Not, or Tawna Fenske’s previous release Making Waves? What did you think?
Comment by March 13th to be entered in my $25 gift certificate giveaway.
Haven’t read this one yet & I still have her first book on my bookshelf, but it will have to wait. I have a couple of books to read before. Have you read her “Making Waves”?
I have Making Waves on my TBR pile and am looking forward to that one. I’ve heard it’s very entertaining. I’ll keep this book in mind, though I hope the characters will jump out for me.
This is a new-to-me author and I really like the set-up of this story. I think I may give it a try. Thanks for the review!
I haven’t read any of Tawna’s books, but I will be checking them out.
I had the same experience with another book and couldn’t figure out why it was bothering me! Reading your description of Believe it or Not makes me wonder if I should add it to my TBR list because I’ve really been looking for humor in my books lately.