Meet Me at the Lake: Red Flag Central

Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune
Genres: Romance
Pages: 336
Goodreads

Fern Brookbanks has wasted far too much of her adult life thinking about Will Baxter. She spent just twenty-four hours in her early twenties with the aggravatingly attractive, idealistic artist, a chance encounter that spiraled into a daylong adventure in Toronto. The timing was wrong, but their connection was undeniable: they shared every secret, every dream, and made a pact to meet one year later. Fern showed up. Will didn't.

At thirty-two, Fern's life doesn't look at all how she once imagined it would. Instead of living in the city, Fern's back home, running her mother's Muskoka lakeside resort--something she vowed never to do. The place is in disarray, her ex-boyfriend's the manager, and Fern doesn't know where to begin.

She needs a plan--a lifeline. To her surprise, it comes in the form of Will, who arrives nine years too late, with a suitcase in tow and an offer to help on his lips. Will may be the only person who understands what Fern's going through. But how could she possibly trust this expensive-suit wearing mirage who seems nothing like the young man she met all those years ago. Will is hiding something, and Fern's not sure she wants to know what it is.

But ten years ago, Will Baxter rescued Fern. Can she do the same for him?

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Disclaimer: If you don’t like negative reviews that are rant-y, please skip this one.
If you like reviews that feel like a friend venting about some bullsh*t, keep going 😆

Look, I get why people enjoyed this one, but I could not get past the main character, Fern.

She is just one walking red flag.

I knew she was going to grate my nerves when, within the first 17 pages, someone compliments her haircut (in which she went from long hair to short hair so hello people are going to notice) and she says something along the lines of “I don’t recall asking for your opinion, but thanks“. From that moment on, I was peeved with her. Because, oh, did I forget to mention that the person who complimented her was a man? Because it was. And the whole exchange felt very toxic feminism to me. Don’t get mad at me for that, but a man complimenting your hair doesn’t justify such a snooty response. Especially if that person has never wronged you in the past.

So, yeah, she rubbed me the wrong way off the bat.

But that’s not all, now we gotta sprinkle in a classic scorned woman cliche: This 30-something-year-old woman wanted to burn a man’s clothes when he left and the only reason she didn’t was because she tripped on something and got distracted? How unhinged are you, ma’am? Seek help.

Then there’s just the romance in general. She essentially disregards Jamie (her ex) throughout the entire book. From the 10-years-ago flashbacks where she pretends he doesn’t exist to the current day he’s-the-manager-of-her-moms-legacy and she still seems annoyed of him. He’s been a genuine person to her, and her family, throughout her entire life but because he’s just not edgy enough she treats him terribly.

Oh, but the love interest, Will? He’s an artist with tattoos so obviously he’s the much better choice even though he’s a manbaby who is angsty because some really mundane early mid-life crises type of reasons. Bleh.

Besides Will just not being that intriguing of a love interest, we have to believe that these two, who spent 24 hours together 10 years ago are still smitten with each other 10 years later and believe their soulmates. Their whole relationship is based on this one day in which they dumped their dreams on each other. Hi, hello, I don’t know about you but “If you could do anything in the world, right now, what would you do?” is kind of a standard fun question to ask just about anyone. We literally ask children what they want to be when they grow up. So, to have an entire relationship based off this simple premise is, for lack of a better term, lazy.

Basically, I am TEAM JAMIE all day, every day. He is a solid dude and deserved more respect than he got.

At the end of the day, there was just very little I enjoyed about this book. The setting was nice. Everything else, not so much.

#justiceforjamie