The Kissing Game by Marie Harte

 Spicy, opposites attract, contemporary romance

2 stars

Axel Heller has been slowly falling in love with Rena Jackson, but she has no idea.  When she leaves her job as a bartender to finally fulfill her dream of starting a salon, Axel takes his chance to ask her on a date. Unfortunately, Rena is reevaluating her life, and does see a place for Axel there - she wants to settle down with Mr. Right as soon as possible, and she doesn't see Axel as that person.  Determined, Axel makes a bet with Rena.  "I bet you a kiss you can't resist me."  And so the game begins.

A quick note: this book is described as a "sexy contemporary romance," meaning there are explicit scenes inside.  This will be reflected in my review below.  This is also a review that is full of spoilers - you have been warned.

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I did not enjoy this book.  I wanted to, I really did.  I read all the way through to the end, when I was fighting with myself to just put it down.  But I was on a kick of cheesy romances from Kindle Unlimited, I saw this one in my library's e-book catalogue, and I judged a book by its cover and assumed it would be similar to the others I had been reading recently.  I had a good feeling about the synopsis, a bet in a romance novel almost always leads to something exciting, and the cover is really cute.  While the thought was there, the execution of this story did not follow through.  While I usually only blog about books I liked because those are the ones I want to share, I had so many thoughts about this one that it gets a post too.

My biggest issues are as follows.  

Number one: the bet rarely influences the characters at all.  It's basically a reason for them to kiss for the first time, and is how Axel convinces Rena to keep dating him after she changes her mind. 

 

Number two: the characters fall in love but barely know each other.  And not in the romance genre "we just met three days ago and are now in love because we bonded" type of way but "have known/known of each other for a while and know next to nothing because we were barely acquaintances and even though we are supposedly trying to make a relationship work, we never ask questions about each other" type of way.  There is no moment where I felt like they clicked.  In fact, Axel tries to woo Rena by giving her a bunch of small presents leading up to Valentine's Day (which is super cute) but all of his presents are lame, cheap little items that have nothing to do with her or her interests.  And she pretty much hates all of them but likes the attention.  Not the start of a strong relationship. 

Number three: as readers, I feel like we barely get to know the characters.  If you've read any of my other reviews, you may have picked this up, but as a reader I connect really strongly to characters and that typically determines how much I like the story.  In this book, I feel like we only know what the characters think about each other - he's attractive and polite and sometimes angry, she's hot and a romantic and a hairstylist.  I honestly think their biggest personality traits are their careers, which is not a good sign.  What I did learn is that Axel does kind of the bare minimum and has anger issues, and Rena is a hypocrite who wants a man to be nice to her but not Axel because he can't communicate but she doesn't communicate any of her frustrations with him.  UGH.  

Related to numbers two and three is number four: all their relationship issues are solved with sex.  Rena gets angry at Axel for being uncommunicative?  They have sex and it's all fine.  Axel wants to try and woo Rena?  They have sex and now she's falling for him.  Yes, it's a romance, yes it's an adult romance, yes it's fine to have sex in books.  But that's pretty much all they did when together.  

Number five: there's a little too much going on in terms of the conflict of the book.  If you read romances, you know that usually there's one, maybe two big obstacles that either prevent the couple from getting together or threaten their happily ever after.  In this book, there are (recurring) racists, Axel's father, and Rena's mom's relationship issues, and that's on top of the issues Axel and Rena each have.  It was a little much.  I think part of the reason I felt like they didn't know each other was because there was always something else happening in the book, so they didn't get the chance.

I really wanted to like Axel and Rena, and I thought the idea of the story was cute.  But it feels rushed and stuffed with sex to fill all of the gaps where romance should be.  There's not a natural progression of the relationship - they barely go on dates and yet by the end, they're getting married.  It may work for some people, but this book was definitely not my cup of tea.