All Rhodes Lead Here by Mariana Zapata

Source: NetGalley – thank to the publisher!
TL;DR: Not for me, just… no thanks.

Plot: Supposedly a slow burn romance between a older man and younger woman. Very… flat burn more like.
Characters: Fairly flat for me, to be honest. And I didn’t care for our PoV character. She was written as if she were 19, not a grown ass woman.
Setting: Besides being told we were in Colorado I couldn’t tell you much about it.
Romance: The chemistry just wasn’t there folks. No thanks.

Thoughts:

I assumed, after all the intense hype surrounding All Rhodes Lead Here, that I would eat it up. Just slow burn, angsty goodness. It was everywhere and it seemed everyone loved it! Unfortunately it would I was incorrect. This wasn’t slow-burn, just a true test of my patience.

All Rhodes Lead Here is a single PoV, slow burn romance between a young woman and an older man after she rents the room above his garage from his son. Rhodes, our older man, is unaware of this arrangement and is understandably grouchy about it. Aurora has come to town to hike trails her mother loved before her disappearance, an attempt to reconnect to her spirit and recover after a nasty breakup.

It seems like an excellent pitch! I like the idea, but sadly execution was severely lacking for me. The book opens with Aurora making the comment that’s she’s moving “… to the state no one has heard of”. It’s Colorado folks, everyone has heard of Colorado. I’m betting money that quite a few non-Americans have heard of Colorado. That kind of shallow attempt at being quippy is fairly consistent through the book and really indicates the type of writing and character we have. I also found Aurora’s obsession with Rhodes’ age to be very strange. It was commented on every chapter, at least once if not twice and just… yikes?

Rhodes himself was a bit of a flat, grouchy stereotype for me. That’s perhaps more of a me thing as I tend to dislike single PoV romances for this reason. The love interest never comes across. Most of side characters weren’t exceptionally interesting and I overall was pretty disappointed in this one. I can possibly see how this reads quickly and how someone could enjoy it for a very surface level read, but I can’t say I recommend it.

2.5 Occasionally mentioned Hikes out of 5

Side note – Can we stop with the heroines who are weirdly afraid of bats. It’s a personal pet peeve (as someone who loves them, has a couple tattoos of them) for sure. But honestly. Grow up.