MAYBE FOR YOU

A woman fresh out of the Army falls in with a lady’s-man brewery owner while accompanying him on a publicity tour.

Alex Parker has returned to Kansas City after her final deployment. Life is not what she expected, since her fiance died in a tragic accident a year ago, but she's happy to be back in the arms of her family. With a new civilian job lined up in Virginia, Alex has some time to spend doing nothing. But her time back isn’t as helpful as she’d expected; being less busy than she was in the military is getting to her. Even after a year of friendly messaging with her brother’s best friend and business partner following a brief but meaningful encounter just days after what should have been her wedding, Alex is starting to feel the weight of her grief. When an opportunity arises to accompany Jake on a two-week trip through the South to help promote the business, she jumps at something to keep her thoughts occupied. It doesn’t hurt that she and Jake have gotten to know each other very well, and he’s not bad to look at either. When the pair decide to act on their attraction, neither knows where it might lead them. In the third novel of her Whiskey and Weddings series, McLaughlin (Only with You, 2018, etc.) introduces us to a couple who could have used significantly more development, with and without each other. The friendship they develop during Alex’s deployment happens completely off-page, so the reader is introduced to their dynamic at their reunion. Even with sprinkled reflections on conversations they’d had, the two people who interact in the moment seem to know each other much less than they should. This, combined with mediocre writing, leads to a less-than-stellar reading experience.

Only for major fans of the series.