This guest review comes from Lisa! A longtime romance aficionado and frequent commenter to SBTB, Lisa is a queer Latine critic with a sharp tongue and lots of opinions. She frequently reviewed at All About Romance and Women Write About Comics, where she’s on staff, and you can catch her at @‌thatbouviergirl on Twitter. There, she shares good reviews, bracing industry opinions and thoughtful commentary when she’s not on her grind looking for the next good freelance job.

…

Only One Tour Bus swept me off of my feet, almost in spite of myself and in spite of the fact that the hero’s behavior made me side-eye him to a degree. But the joie de vivre of the piece won me over; it’s light, a fun romp that speeds through Europe with the same easy-breezy spirit as its leads. It might not be perfect, but it was a glorious experience that I truly enjoyed for its quick pace and sense of playfulness. I highly recommend it as a summer vacation and beach read, smooth as a pina colada.

Asha Kapoor and Callum Kelly are both tour bus guides whose weaknesses complement each other. Asha puts on entertaining tours, but tends to go light on the historical context. Calum is serious and stodgy, but knows his European history. Both of them have completely different ideas as to what a good tour should contain, so they clash on the job and are happy that they get to work individual routes. But while they get good reviews, tourists keep remarking on their respective weaknesses in their feedback. Their boss’ solution? Have them work a single tour together and see if their scores improve. If they don’t, someone’s getting fired.

Asha and Callum hate their lives now — well, at least in the beginning. They immediately set about countermanding and undermining each other as they traipse across the continent. Forced to share beds and the front of the bus as the journey goes on, they try not to notice the sparks bursting to life between them. As Callum tries to find his smile and Asa tries to do her homework, they endure illness, annoying tourists and each other’s big foibles to make their way to the finish line. But will they end up as partners in more than travel?

Only One Tour Bus is a classic grumpy and sunshine romance, but there’s also plenty of observational humor, banter and interpersonal drama to be had along the way. Asha and Callum’s POV on their tour groups and on their colleagues worked well for me. It’s fun to traipse from England to France and beyond with these two.

Callum’s big dream is to become a teacher, but he has absolutely no filter whatsoever and that keeps getting him into trouble. He rails against colonialism when the tour stops at an Indian restaurant in Paris, and he has no faith in the tour group’s behavior, causing him to presume that Asha thinks they’re hellions as much as he does.

Asha, meanwhile, is much more even-tempered: she’s a natural tour guide because she likes people, and she’s willing to do the work when things get bumpy instead of throwing her hands up and storming out. Asha is positive about everything, or tries to be – Callum wants to be left alone with some good booze. It’s classic opposites attract stuff – she stops him from exploding and ruining the tours, he supports her choices on the tours and tries to loosen and soften up and ends up falling all over himself trying to get closer to her. They ought to be a disaster together, but they really do even each other out in a beautiful way.

The process of their getting together was a lot of fun; only these two could fall in love while herding drunken tourists or desperately searching for rebellious missing teenagers who got lost somewhere in Spain. They both desperately try to suppress their lust and caring for one another, but Callum nurses Asha through a brief illness, and Asha steps in whenever his volcanic temper threatens their jobs. The balancing act is what makes the book a fun and soothing process. I mean, he calls her his ‘Wee Sunshine.’ How could any woman resist that?

So why a B? The last quarter of the book is why:

In the end, Only One Tour Bus ended up being an appealing afternoon’s diversion for me. I loved spending time in Europe with these two and actually wished I was a part of their tour group – minus the tourists’ binge drinking and the endless trips to the gift shop.