This one definitely wasn’t for me. A few weeks ago, someone mentioned The Worst Guy on Twitter and said that the hero in that one had falsely been classified as an asshole when he was grumpy. Of course, I went to Goodreads quickly to see if any of my friends had read it, and saw Emmalita had given it positive feedback. In fact I enjoyed it so much, I wanted to pick up something else by her, especially since there are so many couples in this hospital already, so I correctly assumed their stories had been written elsewhere. In retrospect, I probably should have found Nick’s novel, but his was in a different series (Walsh) and I decided to stay with the hospital one (Vital Signs) and read Cal and Stella’s story.
There was nothing particularly wrong with it but it was kind of boring. After months of crushing on the woman on his running trail, Cal finally interacts with her, and they are making out in a cafe within minutes. Stella doesn’t want complications, she is happy with her busy work life and her set “calendar guys” that she has arrangements with for regular sex. And yet, she soon finds herself cancelling on them and spending more and more time with Cal.
I just needed more development for Cal; it all felt a bit superficial (former Army ranger, cardiovascular surgeon, generally a good guy) where he was just waiting around on her to fully commit. It also didn’t help that I absolutely despised the endearment he used for Stella – “sweet thing” – like, that’s a description of a bakery item. I actually appreciate a low drama romance novel but I just needed more reason to be invested in Cal. Stella had a bit more personality, and the book did a better job of showing why she was afraid than really illuminating Cal – in some ways he felt contradictory as a character … like I absolutely buy all the innuendo from a former Army dude but it was completely at odds with everything else and just mentioning “this is out of character for me” a few times still didn’t quite do enough to reconcile him as one complete person to me.
This is more of a 2.5 but rounding up because it might be a me issue.
