Queen of Klutz by Samantha Garman

ROM COM/CHICK LIT

Publication date: 12/22/2015
Kindle Unlimited: Yes
Cliffhanger: No
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There are some things to enjoy here, but there’s also some stuff you have to be willing to overlook. I’ll start with the positives:

• The banter between Sibby and her friends/co-workers and the hero, Aiden, is witty as hell. If you enjoy good banter (and I do), you’ll like the dialogue in this one.
  

• Aiden is a damn-near-perfect book boyfriend. He’s hot and patient and not an alphahole, and he’s also smart and funny, so bonus!
• If you set the romance aside, the parts of the book where Sibby is at work in the restaurant are pretty funny. It gives you a picture of the food service industry that’ll make you laugh and cringe all at the same time.

Now, for the not-so-glowy bits:

1. The word “hipster” is tragically abused. I’m pretty sure the word appears thousands of times throughout the book. We get it—Sibby is a cute little hipster who wears hipster clothes and hipster glasses. Enough, already!
2. There’s no sex. Well, there IS sex, but it’s not on the page. There’s not even fade-to-black sex. It’s more like, “he came over to my house”, followed immediately by, “the next morning, we got dressed.” It’s all left up to your imagination. I don’t really mind a clean read, but this book came up as a sponsored ad on Amazon along with a bunch of regular contemporary romances like those by Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward and Melanie Harlow. That means that the author (or her publisher) specifically targeted those authors’ readers with her ad. And if you read Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward and Melanie Harlow (and I do), then you’re used to some steamy, right-there-on-the-page sex scenes. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver, authors and publishers. That’s my motto.
3. I think the old “oh, isn’t it adorable that she can’t walk through a room without falling or spilling something” thing is really overdone in romance novels. It’s not cute when someone is as tragically uncoordinated as Sibby is. I almost feel like she should be checked out for balance issues and inner ear problems.
4. And just like I’m tired of completely klutzy heroines in romances, I’m getting sick of the “I found my boyfriend in bed with a man on the same day I lost my job” heroine. The amount of times this has happened in romance novels would lead people to believe that there is a statistically significant number of people this happens to on a daily basis. In reality, I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s kinda rare.
5. Sibby and her friends/co-workers are VERY immature. They’re 27 year-olds (and older) who act (and drink) like 19 year-olds. I kind of wanted to shake them and tell them to grow the hell up. Then I wanted to yell at them to get off my lawn.
6. Everyone in the book thinks Sibby is just so adorable and so hilarious. I just didn’t get it. I found her to be a little whiny and annoying, frankly. She was kind of a jackass to Aiden on several occasions, too. I think Aiden could’ve done better. I would’ve liked to set him up with a heroine from another book because I think he deserved it.     

So, long-story-short, this book wasn’t without charm. It just wasn’t my cuppa. And it was certainly not the kind of read that should be targeted to fans of Vi Keeland, Melanie Harlow and Penelope Ward. No, siree. But if you liked the classic chick lit formula that was all the rage about a decade ago (or if you’re a food service worker), you’d probably enjoy this one.  

Does this book contribute to or help crush the romance stigma?
It’s stigma-free. No rehab needed.

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