Review - Baby, Drive South by Stephanie Bond

Baby, Drive South
By Stephanie Bond
329 Pages

While in my local small-town pharmacy and waiting somewhat impatiently in a line with the sloooooooowest cashier on earth, I picked Baby, Drive South by Stephanie Bond up, glanced at the hottie on the cover, skimmed the back (hot men and a small town, I’m in!  Literally.  Wait, where’s the hot men in my small town?) and tossed it into my basket just in time for it to be my turn at the cash.  It was also just in time for the cashier to go on her “break”, but that’s probably not this point of this particular rant.

Here’s the thing about this book - I knew it was going to be fluffier than what I usually like.  Three brothers, who happen to be super hot ex-military men, are re-building their hometown after it was completely ravaged (and not in the good way) by a tornado.  Making good headway with their crew of a hundred or so male workers, they realize they’re lacking something - women.  They post an ad in a Northern town, and of course, the women come down in droves.  One brother is faced with the task of making the heart broken and “not so pretty” doctor stay, and well, we can see where that’s going, right?

The transparent story isn’t my issue with this book.  The issues I had with this book were small ones, but there were a lot of them, and it added up quickly.  There wasn;t much depth to the story - again, somewhat expected (of cooooooourse all the women in the caravan were good looking!), but the formalness to the conversations was hard to take.  So not only did I not really find any emotional attachment to the characters, I also found them unbelievable (even for such an already un-believable plot). 

The three main men in this story are hotties.  I get it.  Except every time the main male character of the story, Porter, is mentioned, so are his bulging biceps.  Or rippled abs.  Or broad shoulders.  Or cleft chin.  Every. Single. Time.  I get it, he’s hot - please stop hitting me over the head with it.  The same goes for the main female character, Nikki, the less-pretty doctor.  I know most women compare themselves to other women, but this was a bit extreme.  Not only did she think lowly of herself physically, but every time the men mentioned her, they always had to mention or think about how un-knockoutish she was.  Really?  We’re left to believe that a lot of Nikki’s low self-esteem comes from being dumped by a jackass for a stripper, but HELLO?  I may know a thing or two about that (although I don’t think any of my Ex-Husband’s girlfriends are strippers, one of them very well could be).  You definitely wonder what you did wrong, could have done better, what you lack, etc etc etc .. but after a certain point, you also realize some men?  Are just jackasses that want strippers with big boobs. 

Huh.  Where was I going with this?

Oh, right.  Personally, I like my female characters written with a bit more strength to them, or at least a bit more ... something.  Common sense?  A hundred pages in, and still no other “smart” women had been part of the caravan.  Just the Doc, and although she was smart, she wasn’t pretty.  You see where I’m having issues, don’t you?

The sex scene was decent, although I tried not to think about the logistics of it too much.  But again, it felt like it was written hurridly ... he didn’t come quickly, but it sure ddin’t take long to read.   I felt a little disappointed, like that time with ... well, nevermind.

I do like Stephanie Bond as a writer, and I’ll probably end up reading the next two books in this Southern Roads trilogy (Baby, Come Home & Baby, Don’t Go, respectively) because the plot line had just enough to make me want to know what happens with a few characters.  I just hope we see a bit more depth as we go on - otherwise, this light and fluffy read may float right out of the Whiskey Haze known as my memory.