Book Review: Faking It With the Grump (Second Chance Café) by Kate O’Keeffe

Faking It With the Grump is the first book in the Second Chance Café series by Kate O’Keeffe. He’s grumpy, boring, and thinks it’s okay to wear a suit and tie to a small town bar full of lumberjacks. But when I kiss him? Let’s just say I wasn’t expecting THAT. It's one thing to be dumped by the huge Hollywood star you thought you were going to marry. It’s quite another to move back to the small town you're both from. As a booby prize for being shown the door by Dex Ryder, everyone is trying to set me up with their son, their nephew, or their long-lost cousin’s gardener. I’m not going to put up with their patronizing sympathy anymore. So, when I spot new-guy-in-town Christopher Young, I set out to make him mine. Or you know, pretend to make him mine. I’m still in a horrible funk over Dex, and Christopher is an uptight grump. Not exactly my type. The fact that despite appearances, he’s gorgeous and doing weird things to my blood pressure doesn't mean a thing.

Faking It With the Grump is a fun ride. I enjoyed the characters and the set up of the small town that will be the setting for the series. I thought Harper was a likable and realistic character. She is smart and funny, but is generally too accommodating for her own good. Christopher has been operating under strict control for a long time, and while his seems very smart and observant, he occasionally seemed to be a little lost and clueless. It was sometimes an endearing dichotomy- but sometimes just had me shaking my head. I think I liked the secondary characters and town a bit more than I liked this particular romance. I saw the stumbling blocks a mile away, and while some worked out just fine and I enjoyed the ride- there was one that really frustrated me, and it seemed to me like Christopher never really understood the problem. I did like the final resolution and found the story as a whole to be entertaining and enjoyable, that one thread of the story bothered me enough that I did not love the book as completely as I expected to. 

Faking It With the Grump is a solid opposites attract romance with the promise of more stories to come.