This book is written in first-person, which usually means it takes me a while to get into it, but my interest was caught immediately. The writing is so smooth it is easy to feel like you are wrapped up in Rick Carpenter’s thoughts, which, of course, you are, but this story did an excellent job of inserting the reader into his internal workings. Rick thinks of himself as an introvert, but I think of him as someone who just needs to find the right people.
Rick shares a dinky apartment with Al, who likes to say ‘Dude’ a lot, along with other slang. It’s an interesting relationship, since Al is always ready to party and Rick is not into anything that involves social interaction. He likes to camp alone in the wilderness – very alone – where he will never run into other people. Using his solo time to good effect, Rick has become a writer. It used to be articles for websites and blogs, and the occasional science fiction for Amazon. One drunken night, Al dares him to write something outside his usual genre. Rick insists Al pick the category and, wouldn’t you know it, Rick is now a paranormal romance author. He’s amazed and somewhat embarrassed that he actually makes a living doing romances.
He gets along very well with Al’s family and is glad to take his jumper cables over to Al’s dad’s home to jump-start an old RV. Before he knows it, Rick is the proud owner of said old RV. Now what? Well, finding a place to park it is first. Al’s ex-girlfriend, Tina, who owns a mini storage, knows Rick in passing and it sounds like what she has is just what he needs. So, he has a place to fix up his home on wheels and discovers Tina has no problem helping make it road ready. Once it is good to go, he decides on the perfect ‘alone’ spot to move his RV to and write. Unfortunately, the small town he chooses has a big bias against anyone who might move a trailer park into their area. Since Rick has a large gravelled area for his RV, citizens have gotten the wrong idea, and he finds himself explaining that he has no intention of running a trailer park. Some people don’t care, they’ve decided they just don’t like him, or his RV, or the shed he built for storage. The inspector who is sent to approve everything insists that Rick is trying to sneak in a trailer park and tries to refuse his improvements. Fortunately, there are some people who take a liking to him and help him settle in. That is not the end of troublesome neighbors, so be prepared for plenty of action.
The narrative is interesting with a lot of Rick’s opinions, and his sudden decision to become a prepper and what it would entail. Ultimately, it involved buying groceries in bulk and never actually got into how preppers live. Rick and Tina have a sweet romance, but once he began to dwell on how beautiful and perfect she is, I began to doubt how anyone could be quite that wonderful. There are some fun characters and I did really enjoy those, but they also were near perfect. I happen to enjoy stories that end happily, I just don’t care for flawless characters. Everyone will have to decide for themselves what they think of this book. I enjoyed it enough to keep reading and many others will also.
The rating:
- Genre and general reading age – Romance for adults and teens.
- Level of sexuality – Low.
- Is there graphic language? Very little.
- Did I cry? No.
- Did I laugh? Yes.
- Is this part of a series? Yes, it is book one of the Survival & Preparedness series.
- Level of character development – They are fairly well-developed.
I give this book ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 stars.
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