Charlotte Carter is a music teacher who is about to lose her job because of a lack of funding. So it’s up to her to figure out how to earn the money over the summer. She also wants to avoid her ex-fiancé … which becomes a little more difficult when she meets his brother in somewhat awkward circumstances.
Things go from bad to worse when Charlotte finds herself and Zach signed up to complete a five-hundred mile tandem bicycle ride which, if they can complete the ride in ten days, will earn hem enough to fund the music programme. The catch is that the cycle ride is for couples, so Charlotte and Zach have to pretend to be dating. Pretending should be harder than it is.
Given the title and book description, I’d expected the race to start earlier in the book. As it was, we were a third of the way through the story before the race was introduced, which meant I spent a good portion waiting for the “actual” story to start. As a result, I found the early chapters didn’t capture my interest.
Love in Tandem is a rom-com with an emphasis on the comedy, from Charlotte and Zach’s initial meeting to the tandem bicycle ride. Becca Kinzer says in her author’s note that many of these scenes were inspired by her own long-distance tandem bicycle ride with her then boyfriend (now husband) in 2010. All I can say is that she hasn’t convinced me to take up the sport.
This is the first novel I’ve read by Becca Kinzer, and I thought it was her debut. It’s not—she is also the author of Dear Henry, Love Edith, which got excellent reviews when it released last year. I guess it’s time I put that on my to-read list.
Thanks to Tyndale House and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.
About Becca Kinzer
Becca Kinzer lives in Springfield, Illinois where she works as a critical care nurse. When she’s not taking care of sick patients or reminding her husband and two kids that frozen chicken nuggets is a gourmet meal, she enjoys making up lighthearted stories with serious laughs. She is a 2018 ACFW First Impressions Contest winner, a 2019 Genesis Contest winner, 2021 Cascade Award winner, and all-around champion coffee drinker.
Find Becca Kinzer online at:
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About Love in Tandem
She’s perfectly content leading a quiet life in her small hometown. He’s an adventurer with unquenchable wanderlust. The two couldn’t be any more opposite if they tried. But a tandem bicycle and a 500-mile road trip just might change all that.
After a failed engagement and her mother’s battle with cancer, Charlotte Carter’s life is finally turning around now that she’s landed a dream job teaching music. What she didn’t see coming was the imminent closure of the school’s music program. She’s determined to save it, even if it means getting creative. There’s no way she’s chalking this up as just another failure in her book of recent embarrassments.
Zach Bryant is back in town just long enough to see his brother Ben get married and then he’s off traveling the world again. He never imagined he’d run into Charlotte Carter, his brother’s ex-fiancé, or that everyone would believe he and Charlotte are an item. He certainly didn’t dream he’d end up riding a tandem bicycle hundreds of miles with her in an attempt to raise funds for a defunct music program, but how can he say no when the prize money would help him out of his financial predicament too?
Charlotte is sure she can set aside her differences with Zach long enough to cross the finish line and win the giant cash prize . . . can’t she? A few hundred miles in, she’s questioning her deeply held assumptions about Zach and wondering if maybe tandem biking is only the start of their biggest adventure yet.
