REVIEW: Flirting in Cars by Alisa Kwitney

Flirt­ing in Cars by Alisa Kwit­ney is a smartly writ­ten con­tem­po­rary romance novel. Read excerpt here. Here is the plot description:

An accom­plished jour­nal­ist, Zoë Goren can’t drive and she doesn’t cook. But that’s never been a prob­lem in Man­hat­tan, where the streets are filled with taxis and take­out restau­rants, and a busy sin­gle mother can find every­thing she needs right at her fin­ger­tips. In fact, Zoë can’t imag­ine liv­ing or work­ing any­place else. But when Zoë’s daugh­ter is diag­nosed with dyslexia, she decides to make the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice, mov­ing two hours from Man­hat­tan in order to enroll Maya in an excel­lent school for chil­dren with learn­ing dif­fer­ences. Stranded in a rural par­adise, Zoë must grap­ple with iso­la­tion, coy­ote howls, and the lack of good deliv­ery ser­vices. But when she decides to over­come her fear of dri­ving and take lessons, she meets Mack, an unnerv­ingly attrac­tive townie, back from the war in Iraq and try­ing to adjust to civil­ian life. With a bud­ding new romance and a report­ing gig for the local paper, Zoë just might sur­vive in the wilder­ness of small-town Amer­ica after all.

I really enjoyed this novel because it was refresh­ing and it fea­tured a cross-cultural romance that was quite sexy.   Zoë Goren  is Jew­ish and speaks sev­eral dif­fer­ent lan­guages. Her fam­ily came from Iraq before set­tling into Manhattan.  Zoë  is a free lance jour­nal­ist  and the author pre­sented a cou­ple of her New York Times op-ed pieces into the story.   Zoë decides to move to Arca­dia in order for her dyslexic daugh­ter to catch up aca­d­e­m­i­cally. The story is pretty much about them adapt­ing to the coun­try life after leav­ing the big city behind.

John Mckenna or “Mack” as he likes to be called, is pretty laid back. I liked him a lot. He loves cars, he teaches teens how to drive and he’s a vol­un­teer EMT in Arca­dia. Mack also suf­fers from bouts of post trau­matic stress from his days in Iraq. She’s the city girl and he’s the townie. Their rela­tion­ship starts off as a tem­po­rary fling for Zoë. She makes the mis­take of think­ing of Mack as not being her intel­lec­tual equal.  Zoë being ten years older than Mack, she saw him only as her “boy toy.”  How­ever, she learns that Mack has more depth to him than meets the eye.

As for their romance — their first meet­ing and rela­tion­ship had a nat­ural flow to it for me. The love scenes while explicit, they are not numer­ous. They actu­ally added to char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and had a real­is­tic fla­vor to it. You see them laugh­ing, talk­ing and flirt­ing with each other.  Other plot threads included a cor­rupt town super­vi­sor who was paid off by devel­op­ers that even­tu­ally sparks an out­cry from the town. That thread winked out towards the end in a quiet resolution. Zoë  also has to grap­ple with her dys­func­tional fam­ily. It’s a messy sit­u­a­tion that didn’t get resolved at the end due to it’s complexity.

Con­flicts were pretty much self-contained. There was a moment of stu­pid­ity on Mack’s part that served more for plot devel­op­ment rather than char­ac­ter.  Any­way, the author does have a refresh­ing voice and the story moved at an even pace. I liked Mack a lot because he was human and rep­re­sented many young men his age today. Plus, it didn’t hurt that he read poetry. Zoë, I didn’t like as much because she came off  too much as an elitist. However, Zoë wasn’t a com­pletely unlik­able char­ac­ter. She had some good points like putting her daughter’s needs before own and even­tu­ally see­ing beyond Mack’s blue col­lar sta­tus. However, in the end, I still thought she was a social snob.  Also, the cit­i­zens of Arca­dia helped make the story even more enjoy­able. I espe­cially enjoyed the Thanks­giv­ing din­ner episode. Anyway, I had fun read­ing this book and slowed my read­ing down just a tad to drag out the end­ing.  Flirt­ing in Cars is an apt title for a book that hid many pleas­ant sur­prises for this reader. I’m glad that I read it.  A B+.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Alisa Kwit­ney, Cross Cul­tural Romance, Flirt­ing in Cars

For Fur­ther Reading

• REVIEW: ‘Token’ Writ­ten by Alisa Kwit­ney and Illus­trated by Joëlle Jones
• REVIEW:The End of the Rela­tion­ship: Short­com­ings, Adrian Tomine
• REVIEW: ‘The Bone Gar­den’ by Tess Gerritsen
• REVIEW: What The Heart Knows by Kath­leen Eagle
• REVIEW: Rea­son to Believe by Kath­leen Eagle
• REVIEW: The Bronze Horse­man by Paul­lina Simons
• REVIEW: Light­ning by Dean Koontz
• REVIEW: Small Town Girl by LaVyrle Spencer
• REVIEW:Remember the Time by Annette Reynolds
• REVIEW: Fever Dreams by Laure Leone

Tagged as: Alisa Kwitney, Contemporary, Older Woman, Younger Man Theme