Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
What an odd romance. I just wish that I could have liked it more than I did. I just thought after the first few chapters I read that the characters of Trixie and Bear fell flat. And also, I would have strangled Trixie with the whole let’s have animals all over the place thing she was into. The insta-love thing as a plot never really works for me either I realize as a romance reader. I like the slow burn and then the execution. Unless you are setting the stage for something fantastic there, I have not in one case bought a insta-love, and this one I felt like ran straight up to that edge and I just kind of huffed and puffed about it.
“To Get to the Other Side” follows Trixie who has to find a new apartment after her landlord refuses her to allow a chicken she rescued into the building. She has just a few days to find a new place. When she shows up to an meet the owner of a house to rent (well room) she finds herself meeting the man she saw the other day when she rescued the chicken. The man (Bear) is annoyed about the whole thing since his sisters did this to help him find a date (yeah that’s not how it works!) and then decides to of course rent Trixie a room because hey, she’s hot. I don’t know guys. I maybe watched too much of “Fear Thy Roommate” the past two weeks when I was sick with COVID, but this is a terrible idea.
With regards to Bear, he’s bland as a character and I really didn’t like his sisters forcing their way into making him have a relationship. I just have a thing about people jumping over my boundaries, so that’s probably why I didn’t find any of them cute. I also got really tired of reading about Bear having “blue balls”. I felt at times that I was back reading older romance books from a different time. I legit kept muttering I am sick of hearing about this. He can barely even pay attention to Trixie because he’s so fixated on her “butt” [the world butt was not used.]
Trixie is a mess. She is just another version of the manic pixie girl trope and I was kind of annoyed about half way through. The sex scene was not great IMHO either.
That’s honestly all this book was though. Two people living together, trying to not have sex. It was not that engrossing. I think that there just wasn’t enough there for me to care about Bear or Trixie as I was reading. I was tempted to DNF this one, but started it several months back and finally just finished it up. Not the worst romance I have read, so this one gets two stars and not one.
