I’ve been a rom-com mood lately, a void that Hollywood (despite their plethora of Chrises) refuses to fill, so I picked up I Flipping Love You by Helena Hunting. It was described to me as a romantic comedy with a case of mistaken identity and a lot of sexy fireworks. The problem was, I wouldn’t say this book is actually very funny and some of the devices used to try and make it humorous didn’t work for me. It was a solid contemporary romance and I enjoyed it, but I didn’t get the chuckles I was looking for.

Rian Sutter and her sister Marley are twins.  Marley swipes Pierce Whitfield’s Tesla with her own car and then flees the scene. Pierce later sees Rian in a grocery store, assumes she’s Marley, and confronts her about the damage. Rian pays for the damage (and doesn’t chew her sister out the way I would), and Pierce asks her out. She refuses. He seems like an arrogant asshole to her.

Now Pierce asking her out is tied up with the car repair so initially Pierce read as pretty gross to me. Take this scene where Rian realizes Pierce is asking her out:

“Are you asking me out on a date?”

“We can call it a date if that’s what you want.”

It suddenly clicks what he’s trying to do. “Hold on a second. Are you trying to blackmail me into having sex with you over a car repair? Because if that’s your angle, I’m sorry to tell you, but you can’t put a price tag on my vagina. She is not for sale.”

Half of me is flattered that he thinks sex with me would be worth trading for a three-grand car repair. The other half of me is disgusted that I’m flattered at all.

Three grand is still a pretty hefty price tag, but still. Only a few cars have parked in my garage. I’m not interested in letting another in there simply to avoid paying for a repair, even if the car is a nice one and is owned by a seriously hot man.

“Whoa. Simmer down, sweetheart. I’m not trying to blackmail you. You were the one asking about a sexist comment discount. All I’m suggesting is that we discuss how to proceed over drinks. They can be of the non alcoholic variety if you’re worried about being under the influence around me. And for the record, I neither said nor implied that sexual favors would be involved, but I’m quite intrigued that you’ve automatically assumed it would be included in the deal.”

Well, gosh, Piece, when you live in a world where your body is not safe from predatory behavior, it’s kind of easy to jump to the conclusion that the guy who you owe three grand to, and who keeps flirting with you and asking you out, might be hoping to profit sexually from your sister’s mistake. Welcome to being a woman. Every conversation and transaction with a strange man has layers of “am I safe?” running beneath it.

So this scene squicked me out, and I assumed I would hate Pierce for the rest of the book, but he did improve as a character later on.

Rian pays Pierce and fully expects never to see him again. Then she and Marley (whom I still wouldn’t be talking to) head to the Hamptons for a beach weekend. Marley and Rian work in real estate. Marley does the people stuff, and Rian runs the numbers. They’re hoping to get enough liquidity to buy a Hamptons home and flip it, with their ultimate goal being getting enough money to buy the Mission Mansion, a house that once belonged to their late grandmother.

Rian was close to her grandmother, a woman who raised her and Marley after their parents were convicted of fraud and fled the US. Knowing that her parents’ white collar crime would impact their ability to do business in real estate, Marley and Rian try to keep their family connections a secret, and it’s something that Rian feels a lot of shame over. Rian and Marley grew up well off, but their parents’ actions bankrupted the family, forcing them to sell the Mission Mansion, the only place Rian ever really felt safe and loved.

So they head to the Hamptons to snoop around and see what might be coming up for sale, and guess whose house they rented for the weekend? Yup, Pierce. Well, Pierce and his brother Lawson. These dudes are rich (although how rich isn’t revealed until later). Lawson is buying up Hamptons properties and renovating them for rent. Pierce, a patent attorney, fucked up an important patent for his family’s business, is embarrassed by it, and is taking the summer off to reevaluate if that’s even the job he really wants. Basically, Lawson buys houses and then Pierce hits things with a hammer to work out his tender emotions.

So Pierce and Rian run into each other, and now that the car thing is solved, wind up having super hot sex on top of a running washing machine. Front loading, I would assume. Then Rian realizes that Pierce is basically her competition in the local housing market and is like “Oh, fuck.”

In terms of conflict, I think if you removed Lawson and Marley from the book, Pierce and Rian would have been fine having a relationship and being in the same business. It’s their siblings who freak out over the boning-plus-professional-competition thing. Pierce and Rian actually handle it like adults.

And Pierce slowly morphs into more of a beta hero. He doesn’t just want sex. He wants to cuddle and have lazy Sundays and be a good partner to Rian. He’s a hero in pursuit but he’s not gross about it (anymore).

My issue was, there were parts in this book that were clearly intended to be laugh-out-loud or at least snicker-out-loud funny and they fell short. For example, Rian and Pierce have beach sex and she gets eaten alive by sand fleas (Pierce is very sweet and gets her Benedryl and rubs anti-itch ointment all over her). This scene didn’t work for me, but for very Elyse-specific reasons. If I even read about bug bites, I get sympathetically itchy. Having sand flea bites all over your body isn’t funny, it’s terrifying. My sister mentioned mites to me when we brought our kitten, Fisher, home from the rescue and I had anxiety-induced hives until we got him to the vet to confirm he was pest free. I would seriously wake up with hives on my face because I thought he might have mites, and while I’m sure not everyone has my psychosomatic prowess, that scene still made me itchy.

There’s another scene where Rian and Pierce are both trying to cozy up to an “old” lady Muriel to get the inside track when she sells her house. Rian visits with her and Peirce helps her out with odd jobs, including cleaning her pool while wearing a Speedo:

He swaggers–it’s definitely not a walk or a strut–around the pool, grabbing the net. He starts at the other side, giving me time to ask some pertinent questions. I have an idea as to why Pierce is here–likely for a similar reason I am. We both want the house. I want to sell it or flip it, and he wants to buy it and rent it. It could end up working in both our favors, unless Marley thinks this is a better house to flip–then I really will be sleeping with the enemy.

He’s definitely got a leg up, or at least another, more enticing appendage. And showing up in a Speedo is a new level of playing dirty. I can’t compete with his six-pack.

“Does Pierce stop by often?”

“Every few days or so. He helps me water the plants and take care of the gardens between landscaping company visits. He usually brings his dog, Trip.”

“Trip?” I feign a questioning look.

She laughs and takes another long gulp of her drink. “Poor little broken mutt has three legs. You’d almost think they’re twins.” She nods in Pierce’s direction with a wink and a nudge.

Okay, so first of all, I’d drink with Muriel. Secondly, Muriel is sixty-five which isn’t an age I consider “old.”

What’s really gross here is the fact that both of them are manipulating Muriel in order to get a better shot at buying her house. Pierce even acknowledges that she’s lonely and looking for friendship, like he’s trying to be a nice guy or something. Except he shows up in a Speedo, specifically to titillate her. Rian bakes her cookies. Neither of them have any intention of keeping up with Muriel after she moves. Their motives are selfish and it wasn’t cool. I don’t like it when protagonists think of other characters as devices instead of people, and I don’t like it when protagonists take advantage of another person’s vulnerability for their own profit.

Muriel aside, Pierce and Rian’s summer romance gets complicated by their competing interests, their siblings who aren’t great, and the fact that neither of them wants to talk about their families. For Rian that means admitting her parents committed fraud then abandoned her sister and her. For Pierce that means telling Rian that’s he’s actually a really wealthy guy, not just a dude helping his brother renovate houses.

Overall, I Flipping Love You was okay. It wasn’t really funny and it took me awhile to warm up to the hero. A lot of the conflict revolved around shitty family members, but then a lot of conflict in real life does too. In the end, I Flipping Love You was a decent contemporary if you like home renovation and beach settings, but it didn’t deliver the laughs I was craving.