Wait For It - Mariana Zapata

Mariana Zapata might just be the queen of the slow-burn romance, that part of the romance genre where characters go from hate to uneasy truce to friends to lovers, the last usually occurring in approximately the last ten pages of the book, at least in Zapata's works.  I really enjoyed several of her other romances, Kulti and The Wall of Winnipeg and Me being the best, so I was excited to finally get around to this one.

Ultimately, though, I don't think this is one of her best.  Wait for It follows a minor character from The Wall of Winnipeg and Me, Diana, who was the best friend of that book's heroine.  She's also the cousin of the heroine of Kulti.  And her love interest, Dallas, is related to a member of the motorcycle club featured in Under Locke, another Zapata novel.  Consequently, this book very much felt like it was mainly supposed to be fan service for readers who wanted cameos of the characters from those books, rather than a romance in and of itself.  I read lots of interconnected romance books, which don't usually feel like this, and I think I can ultimately pin down why this one felt superfluous to one thing: Dallas and Diana don't have the same intense chemistry as the couples in other books.

All of Zapata's books are slow burns, but this one is slower than most, to the point that you have to squint to see the sparks starting to ignite, let alone fly.  Diana's life revolves around taking care of her two nephews, of whom she has custody following her brother's death two years prior to the start of the book.  Consequently, she doesn't have a lot of room for a relationship.  And Dallas, who lives across the street, is going through a divorce, and neither character wants to get involved when one party is still married, so that puts a real damper on things, too.  They don't get along at first, because Dallas thinks Diana is hitting on him, but when it's established she's not, they manage to be friends.  For like 80% of the book.  The build from friends to lovers here didn't feel slow so much as nonexistent, and there's not a lot else going on in the background, either.  It doesn't feel so much like a slow burn as a slow story, and they definitely do not have the same appeal.

Overall, yeah, I'm disappointed.  This just doesn't compare to her other books and was just kind of "blah" overall, seeming mainly to give little glimpses at characters from other books instead of carrying its own weight.  I felt like I never got the "it" that I was apparently supposed to be waiting for!

2 stars out of 5.