Rating: 3 out of 5.

It hurts my heart to give this rating to a Katherine Center book. Normally I love them. Sadly, this one missed the mark for me. The writing is still good and the characters were pretty well formed, I just didn’t really like either of them or care about the plot.

Katie is a video producer and works for a company that creates promo videos for businesses. She finds out the company is downsizing and her creeper boss Cole tells her that it will save her position at work if she takes a job profiling Hutch, a hot shot Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Florida that heroically saved a person. She doesn’t know how to swim or anything about the Coast Guard, but she doesn’t want to lose her job so she goes.

Turns out there is a lot Cole left out about the job. 1. Hutch (a ridiculously hot guy) is Cole’s brother and they haven’t spoken in a really long time. 2. She’ll be living in a cottage in his aunt’s community, and 3. She’ll have to film a lot of the video on a boat (did I mention she doesn’t know how to swim?) Katie does what she always does, fakes it until she makes it. Katie suffers from crippling body image issues and there is a lot of self-hate talk in the book which hits close to home for me, which was a bit uncomfortable.

Hutch acts like he’s got it all together, but inside he’s dealing with a lot of strong feelings about the rescue. Even though the guy he saved lived, Hutch has a lot of guilt about the rescue (which I won’t go into to avoid spoilers). He’s totally against the video, but is ordered to cooperate with Katie by his commander. He just wants to get the thing over with and pretty much discounts Katie and everything she wants to do. They do have one thing in common, however – they both hate love (or so they think).

Mid-way through the book another stressor is added to an already difficult situation, as if the couple didn’t have enough problems as it is. I’m not really sure what it was about this book, but I just didn’t connect with it. I felt there was a lot of unnecessary filler and the “twist” was a bit cringy. I didn’t connect with either MC and frankly, didn’t care what happened to them. But, that’s just me. Others may completely disagree with me.

The bright spot in the book was Hutch’s aunt and her friends. She cracked me up and the dynamic she has with her friends has me hoping I can find a group like that to hang out with once I retire. I’ll also say that the narrators did a great job and I would have probably DNF’d the book if I hadn’t listened to it instead of reading it.

I received a complimentary e-copy and audio copy of this book from NetGalley. All opinions are my own.