4.25 Stars
Travis Hawkins, 21, is a truck
driver. But park you trucker stereotypes and misconceptions at the door. He isn’t crude, rude, or a perv. He’s sweet,
sexy, and a total book boyfriend.
“‘Sexy truckers like Pinterest, too.’”
Angel Thomas, 17/18, is
basically an orphan, a runaway, and a hitchhiker. Oh, and definitely a bit naïve.
But before she runs into any real trouble, fate intervenes causing these two to meet on a stretch of highway and everything that they’ve been missing in life
becomes available to them. But that doesn’t mean the road is always easy.
“‘Oh, I’ll honk your horn so hard…’ –Angel
‘…Baby, I love I when you talk trucker to me.’” –Travis
Angel wants to make it to
California to start a new chapter in life for both her and her convict mother,
and when things start to develop between her and Travis, their time together
faces an expiration date. Meanwhile, Travis is a coveted bachelor in a small town
and while Angel makes some new friends, not all of the locals are happy to meet
Angel.
Told via Angel and Travis’s alternating
first person point of view, the story is largely low angst, light-hearted, and
feel good with positive messages and examples of love. There are no stupid, strung out
misunderstandings here. The couple is young, but they know how to communicate. I
give the story major points for taking a typical clichéd ‘OW misinforms the
heroine’ troupe and showing how a mature person handles it—with a private
conversation that avoids unnecessary further drama. This scene alone helped make both Angel and
Travis very likable and levelheaded. We need more role models like this in
romance!
What was also refreshing was
the virgin status of both the heroine and the hero and, most importantly, the way it was handled. Travis doesn’t go all
caveman about Angel’s purity. His response depicts a real man respectful of
women and secure in his own sexuality:
“It didn’t really matter to me if she was or not.”
Furthermore, their first time
isn’t treated as a means of possession. It’s beautifully done, very sexy, and
captures the emotions of the experience. And once it happens, there’s no
shortage of steam in the story. :)
“She licked her lips and my body suddenly felt electrified, like a soda can after it got shaken up, ready to combust.”
All in all, in a contemporary
romance market often polluted with manwhores and sexist pigs, I wish more
authors would take a chance with this scenario and these type of good guy heroes.
