Week Thirty-Five: Lucky Leap Day

My friend Matthew thinks that a key to the success of a romantic comedy is a dog. In this case, Lucky Leap Day is a rousing success.

In all other areas, though, it falls short.

Up-and-coming screenwriter Cara Kennedy has the biggest meeting of her career in two days―but for now, she's on vacation. Her short trip to Ireland is all planned out:

See the sites around Dublin
Don't think about her jerk of an ex she was supposed to spend this trip with
Relax with some Irish whiskey
Propose to a sexy Irish musician on Leap Day
Wake up married
Wait, those last two things weren't on her list...

A whirlwind trip to Ireland is supposed to end with a suitcase full of wool sweaters and souvenir pint glasses―not a husband you only just met!

After one-too-many whiskeys, fledgling screenwriter Cara Kennedy takes a page out of someone else's script when she gets caught up in the Irish tradition of women proposing on Leap Day. She wakes the next morning with a hot guy in her bed and a tin foil ring on her finger. Her flight is in four hours, and she has the most important meeting of her career in exactly two days―nothing she can do except take her new husband (and his adorable dog) back to LA with her and try to untangle the mess she's made of her life...

See, for me, the only thing that matters in a romantic comedy is that I believe the main relationship. I don’t care how convoluted the plot is, or how ridiculous the supporting cast may be. I don’t care if anything in the book is remotely believable, as long as I believe that our leads are desperately in love.

In this book, I didn’t buy it.

The set-up is cute. Our heroine drunk- proposes to a local musician while on a trip to Ireland. When she realizes what she’s done, she decides to take the gentleman (and his dog) back to LA with her, to sort it out there. This is ridiculous, but see above. If they had built a believable relationship, maybe a nice slow burn, friends-to-lovers thing, I would not have cared that it was a ludicrous setup. I mean, they told the airline that the dog was a service animal, and with no proof other than a bumbling declaration, they let the animal on the plane! It was just…silly.

But if the relationship had felt less forced, if Cara and Finn had had an ounce of chemistry, if I had been given a chance to really fall for them, I would have overlooked all of that. Instead, their interaction was stiff, forced and, in the end, inauthentic. Their break-up didn’t make much sense, and neither did their getting back together. Like in most romcoms, it didn’t really occur to me that they wouldn’t reconcile…but unlike in most romcoms, I didn’t really care if they didn’t.

Not the worst book I ever read. Just a complete miss for me.