Catching a cold and trying to balance my own writing has put me a bit behind in my reviewing. I’m still reading, but I want to make sure I give enough time to write up something thoughtful and reflective after finishing each story that I’m blessed to hold between these calloused hands. I found Sweat Equity via social media a couple weeks ago and since my queue is so full I sat on it until recently, but I picked it up at the perfect time as getting back in shape is a small theme in this book and it encouraged me to brace the cold air and go for a few runs. It also made me wish I lived on the west coast.
Here’s the premise-
After a recent break up, Avery Simmons, is a cloud of despair, heavy with self-pity and equipped with mood swings, she’s not the ideal roommate. Charlie Grant doesn’t know what she’s getting into when she takes the spare bedroom in Avery’s apartment, offered to her by their mutual friend and landlord, Brennan. Avery’s unpleasant demeanor puts a bad taste in Charlie’s mouth from the start but the two woman go back and forth, inching towards friendship as they help each other, Charlie giving Avery a work-out plan and Avery making Charlie a website for her business, only to fall two steps back by bursts of conflict. The two women struggle through changes and grow in their own way but also together. I should note that this is the first book in the LadyLuck Startup series. Avery works at a lesbian dating app startup company, LadyLuck, so we may see more of the characters here.
As a mid/late-twenty-year old, I thought this book had a general feeling and a lot of action that I could relate to. It’s cut from every-day life with realistic dialogue and characters. These characters are not afraid to be human i.e. flawed, which lent room to a nice arch of growth, especially for Avery. I liked how even through Avery’s flaws she was mature enough to listen to criticism from her friends about her behavior and actually asses herself. In this way, the character change in this book isn’t subtle, but I think that adds to the “cut-from-life” experience you get while reading it.
One thing that irked me was the repetitive use of referring to the girls by their hair color. Not only did it become distracting but it was also confusing at times because Charlie and Avery are both brunettes with just varying shades. Personally, I think using “she/her/character name” would have worked fine.
This is a slow burn romance. Avery and Charlie go from dislike, to friends, to enemies, to friends with secret feelings toward each other, back to enemies, to friends, then finally to lovers or some type of order like that. At times the relationship made me want to pull my hair out. Some of the conflicts were hard for me to understand, especially the last one. I know in terms of sensitivity I score a negative twenty, but personally, it seemed like some of the conflicts were misunderstandings that could have been cleared up with a simple conversation. I guess this mimics real life in certain ways, but also managed to give me a headache trying to keep up with the drama. All of this drove the tension leading up to the finale though and it was worth it in the end.
This book had really affective and flushed out side/minor characters which added depth to the story, from Brennan to the older woman sitting pool side at the end. I enjoyed that the two main leads lived in a world where they interacted with others and those side characters served the plot line.
If you like angsty-slow burn romances with realistic characters then you might enjoy Sweat Equity
https://www.amazon.com/Sweat-Equity
Follow Monica McCallan here: @MonicaMcCallan