Review: Kate Angell's No Tan Lines

I've read all of Kate Angell's Boys of Summer (Richmond Rogues) novels and enjoyed them thoroughly. They were by no means perfect, cramping several stories into single novels, but I still had high hopes for her summer release, No Tan Lines (Barefoot William). It started out quite promising as a matter of fact. We are introduced to handsome rich kid Trace Saunders and beachy townie Shaye Cates in the late 1990s when they are still teenagers.

[Note: Angell's heroes have the worst names in contemporary romance: Brek and Kason, to name a few. The heroines don't fare much better. I understand the need to pick a unique name, but come on.]

Their tension is evident in their hostile banter. It's made clear that they come from rival families who have settled neighboring beach towns (Trace's is ritzy, Shaye's is blue collar).

Fast forward more than a decade and they are forced to work together on a volleyball tournament that will bring much needed revenue to the resort towns. They constantly struggle to maintain authority over the tournament planning, and what I thought was going to be the main problem was resolved half-way through the book. He betrayed her, then came to her houseboat, barely apologized ("I made a mistake and I'm sorry.") and then her parrot told him to kiss her. The sex itself was pretty perfunctory. They've been enemies for their whole lives and supposedly have this explosive attraction to each other, but the sex was (pun intended) anti-climactic. It was almost as if Angell got tired of this plot line and was eager to move on.

So... what next?

Enter two--count 'em--two sub-plots. First there's Shaye's cousin Kai (a male, and no, I don't know how to pronounce that--Cay? Chi?) and Nicole Archer, jewelry designer. Oh, and did I mention Shaye's brother Dune (DO YOU SEE WHERE I'M GOING WITH THE NAMES?) and Trace's little sister Sophie (wears baggy clothes--turns out she's hot underneath--who saw that coming?) who gets about a three-page explanation. At this point, all I'm thinking is, where the hell are the hero and heroine? And do they not have any conflict anymore? Where are we going here??

Spoiler: no conflict left. Total disappointment. It is my opinion that when the author realized she'd lost her way, which she must've known, she should've gone back to the drawing board rather than submit this half-thought-out mish-mash of stories. Maybe just a novella with the main hero/heroine. I assumed at first that the side-plot of Kai and Nicole would be a sequel, but it looks like that will be for Dune and Sophie. I, for one, will not be reading it.

Worst line: "His look was so sexually charged, she nearly climaxed on the spot." NOPE. Doesn't happen. Sorry.