Title: Hairpin Curves Author: Elia Winters
Published: July 28, 2020
Genre(s): Romance: Contemporary
Page Count: 260
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Megan Harris had hopes of seeing the world, but at twenty-five she’s never even left Florida. Now a wedding invitation lures her to Quebec…in February. When her ex-friend Scarlett offers to be her plus-one (yeah, that’s a whole story) and suggests they turn the journey into an epic road trip, Megan reluctantly agrees to the biggest adventure of her life.
A week together in a car is a surefire way to kill a crush, and Scarlett Andrews has had a big one on Megan for years. The important thing is fixing their friendship.
As the miles roll away, what starts as harmless road-trip games and rest-stop dares escalates into something like intimacy. And when a surprise snowstorm forces Megan and Scarlett to hunker down without the open road as distraction, they’ve got a bigger challenge than making it to the church on time: facing the true nature of their feelings for each other.
Carina’s new Adores line is putting out tropey, category-length romances for LGBTQ+ audiences, and I am here for it. (Info from Carina Press here.) Elia Winter’s Hairpin Curves brings readers everything they love about the enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, road trip, and snowed in (just one bed!) tropes, but with 100% more queer lady representation. This book is well-written and competently executes its mission. I would recommend it.
Unfortunately, this was a “meh” read for me personally. I love that Hairpin Curves is soft and wholesome and low conflict (similar to The Girl Next Door by Chelsea M. Cameron, another F/F novel from the Adores line). The problem with a “quiet” romance, however, is that it walks a thin line and can easily veer from quiet into straight-up boring. Which was the case here. I didn’t feel like much of anything actually happened here. Yes, the protagonists are on a roadtrip and seeing sights, but I didn’t get a sense of movement or tension in the narrative. This is primarily because of the lack of strong emotionality between Scarlett and Megan, which I think would have helped power this more laid-back plot.
Firstly, the pacing of the entire story felt a bit off. At the outset, Scarlett and Megan haven’t spoken to each other in several years, as their high school friendship blew up. They get invited to their friend’s wedding in Canada, and decide to drive instead of fly. (The reasons for this are flimsy, but Romance Logic is not to be questioned under such circumstances.) During the entire first third of Hairpin Curves, the protagonists can barely speak to one another civilly. It’s not until the 50% mark that the idea of a romantic relationship enters the picture. I understand the difficulty of progressing from enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, and I understand this is a shorter book overall. But if so much of the text is spent just getting the main characters on speaking terms, that leaves very little room for them to explore whether or not they could feasibly have a monogamous romantic relationship at some point.
In terms of characterization, I though Megan and Scarlett were nice. (Which is to say, I damn them with faint praise.) Both protagonists were realistic, relatable women in their mid-twenties dealing with all of the weird identity crises that go with being that age. I found them to be very authentic, and I enjoyed learning more about them as the story progressed. I was just missing the depth and complexity I reach for in a romance.
Also, I think perhaps what I kept trying to put my finger on while reading is that the romantic arc in Hairpin Curves was too realistic. Hear me out. In real life, people probably don’t have Dark Moments or Secret Babies or Centuries’ Long Family Feuds or [insert romance trope of choice] that keep them apart. Real romantic relationships have tension and conflict, of course, but it’s usually something along the lines of “my wife who I love very much forgot to refill the Keurig reservoir AGAIN!” and not “this fucking guy lied to me about his secret identity as the billionaire who caused my father’s financial ruin!”
Which is not to say that you can’t write a low-stakes romance! I have read them and enjoyed them, numerous times. But I imagine that it’s quite tricky for a writer to sell the normal, everyday conflict in a way that feels just as compelling as the high-octane , bananapants conflicts that are common in some romances. I don’t think Winters quite hit the mark here. And I want queer romance to get a chance at being the multi-faceted, varied smorgasbord of plots and styles and sub-genres that hetero romance has gotten to be. Which is why I love Carina Adores. This particular novel just wasn’t quite it, overall.
At the end of the day, this was not the book for me. I certainly didn’t dislike it, but neither was Hairpin Curves very memorable.
