Title: Jake's Grumpy Cabin
Author: Anna Christie
Date: 2023
Quote: ""Am I tickling you?" "More like tickling my funny bone!""
If you think romances are not to be taken seriously, you might like this one. Start with the title. A cabin can't be grumpy; only the people in it can be. They're not. Jake has avoided involvement with women after an early infatuation with a woman who cheated his family out of money, but he likes "Little Miss Summertime Tourist" from the minute he meets her on one of his infrequent trips into Talkeetna. In less time than it would take real-world acquaintances to form a clear memory of each other's names, he's thinking about "love" and she's ready to move into the cabin. It's a sweet romance because the story is short and breaks off before they're actually shacked or cabinned up together.
Early in the story Emma confides to readers that she's always told students never to go from Point A to Point B with a stranger if Point A is "safe" but, looking at Jake, she's willing to go to Point C if he asks her. That's what this story is all about. The characters know, as the reader must know, that they've not found True Love yet. They are in love with love--more realistically, with their own hormones. Acting out the feelings, at this stage, is the way people used to get into altruistic marriages with people they soon realized they'd never really liked very much. Sometimes when they got to know one another they realized they'd ruined their lives. But this is strictly a fantasy. All we really see them doing is enjoying each other's appeal as a piece of exotica. For Jake being in town, even Talkeetna, is a novelty; for Emma being in Alaska is a novelty. In Alaska summer is a bit of a novelty. Swoon.
The unreality of this story is its charm. It wouldn't sell me a series but then, rare for a Book Funnel book, it's not trying to sell a series. It did tickle my funny bone.
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