Book Description:
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.
Narelle’s Thoughts:
I enjoyed reading Love in Tandem, a LOL funny romcom featuring a fun bike riding road trip adventure. Charlotte doesn’t like being outdoors. The story opens on the last day of the school year in a small Illinois town where Charlotte is having a hilarious close encounter with a bee. She’s committed to her music teaching role and devastated when she learns the funding for next year has fallen through. Charlotte is prepared to go to great lengths to raise the money needed to keep the music program and her job alive.
Zach has known Charlotte and her family for years. He travels the world working as an outdoor adventure tour guide. Zach has returned to Bailey Springs for his brother Ben’s wedding to a woman Zach used to date. Two years earlier, Ben had broken off his engagement to Charlotte only a week before their wedding date.
Charlotte and Zach reconnect in an unusual way and end up on a tandem bike riding adventure with a goal of winning a quarter of a million dollars. A ridiculous comedy of errors lands them in an accidental fake relationship situation. The stakes are high and their lives are headed in different geographical directions after they finish the ride. Charlotte and Zach encounter many obstacles in their often amusing and always challenging journey to happily-ever-after.
I appreciated the sweet subplot involving Charlotte’s sister, Sophia, who literally crashes into the life of a perfect stranger. I recommend Love in Tandem to contemporary romance readers who like fake relationship romantic comedies with a fun cycling road trip adventure and a relevant faith element in the story.
Many thanks to Tyndale and Net Galley for the advanced reader copy.
