Sybil’s review of Speed Dating by Nancy Warren
Contemporary Romance by Harlequin (NASCAR Line)

I picked this up the first time and put it down after reading the back copy. I didn’t like it at all. The second time I picked it up and put it down was because I kept remembering the articles about the NASCAR making the line be ‘family friendly’ and sex being evil. The third time I picked it up and put it down was because there is a real life person in the novel and that tends to squicks me.

The forth time I just bought the damn thing because obviously I wanted to try it if I kept picking it up! It comes down to the fact I am a fan of Nancy Warrens books.

If you like romances that are sugary sweet, close the bedroom door and you can buy NASCAR drivers are really a bunch of good guys who want to settle down with a 50’s style TV sitcom mom… this is your book. As for me, I think I am going to stick to Warren’s Blaze and Brava books.

My dislike for the covercopy is the first person style it is written in. But it does basically tell the set up of the story. Kendall Clarke doesn’t like her life. She just found out the man she was planing to married knocked up a coworker. She made an ass of herself in front of her peers and her bosses. Her job is in question, so she takes a vacation from life when the chance comes up.

Dylan Hargreave I really wanted to like but I could never get over the fact that he ‘needed’ a woman to protect him from his ex-wife. He is pretty much a beta hero, if that protect him from his ex-wife thing didn’t tip you off. He is handsome, laid back, easy going, need for speed type of guy. Who you know, can’t tell his ex-wife he isn’t interested in getting back together.

I found myself telling him to grow the hell up and be a man more than once. Kendall was painted as way too much of a goodie goodie. We are told what a fine, moral, upstanding person she is, repeatedly. And even though she takes a ‘job’ which is basically to kiss a man in public for luck, really she isn’t that ‘kind of girl’. It isn’t like she was being paid for the lip smacking! I can deal with this in come cases but not here. I just kept thinking ‘This is what NASCAR thinks the ideal woman is?’ ‘This is what NASCAR expects me to think drivers act like?’.

I would say I closed the book thinking Speed Dating was a C- but end this post with thinking it was more of a D. And that could be completely unfair of me. I think it comes of taking something real like NASCAR and trying to make it into something that is completely at odds with its image. At least the image I have in my head. I find I really love romance novels centered around sports and have enjoyed quite a few of them but I think I will be benched for this series.

Grade: D