Overall Grade: 4.5 ⭐️
Tropes: forced proximity; best friend’s sister; soccer romance; sports romance; long distance
I had the pleasure of beta-reading Stacy Travis’s He’s A Charmer. To read a book from a rough draft to a final draft is a special distinction. Noting keen changes that help the book bloom makes me excited. And this is definitely the case with Travis’s next book in her San Francisco Strikers series.
I love a forced proximity story. In this book, this is created when Linnie, the story’s FMC, finds herself snowed in with her brother’s best friend, Weston. From the minute they meet, Travis has crafted a distinctive and slow-burning chemistry. Weston is struck by the beauty of Linnie’s eyes, while Linnie finds herself attracted to Weston’s professional athlete physique. Travis deftly draws out their attraction, building it to an incendiary fire. When they can no longer avoid each other, Travis creates fireworks in the bedroom for her couple. Unfortunately, this is short-lived, yet Travis carefully draws them back together, gifting her readers with a sweet ending.
With the pacing on point, character development is also important. Linnie struggles with wanting to be more than just a pretty face as well as her strained relationship with her father (much like her brother, Tim). She wants her father to see her capacity as an individual, not her weakness as a woman. Weston struggles with people leaving him behind, so the fact that Linnie lives in London makes it difficult for him to consider anything with her. Due to being snowed in, Linnie and Weston must confront their feelings about these issues. Their vulnerability to each other adds dimension to their physical attraction, deepening their character development and the storyline. You must be patient with Travis’s He’s A Charmer because this is a slow burn that seems necessary for Linnie’s and Weston’s journeys.
Unlike the other books in this series, Travis’s ancillary characters play small parts in the story. Tim and Mary, Linnie’s siblings, offer moments of wisdom to help her make decisions about her future, but they are fairly silent for much of the book. Instead, Weston and Linnie grow closer with each turn of the page. Their banter and survival tasks create the excitement of the story.
Stacy Travis ends He’s A Charmer with the promise of more stories in a new series. I hope Mary gets a story because her situation is long-suffering. If you’re looking for sport in this romance, you won’t find it. Instead, you’ll fall in love with a couple thrust together in a difficult situation, finding out that true love will find you when you least expect it.
In love and romance,
Professor A
Professor Romance 