Final Lap by Erin McCarthy (Fast Track #8)
Contemporary Romance
October 7, 2014
Berkley
Reviewed by Helyce
Cooper Brickman’s racing season is going downhill fast. Saddled with his much younger half-sister, 13 year old Mary-Jane, he’s finding it difficult to balance life as he knew it. His driving is off, he’s down on points and in the standings and it’s been months since he’s been with a woman. The thing is, he really loves his sister. Intelligent beyond her years, bright and beautiful, she’s definitely not your typical 13 year old. She needs attention and she needs some strict monitoring, and Cooper thinks he’s found the perfect nanny when he meets Harley McLain at a fellow driver’s wedding.
Harley McLain is smitten in a big way when she sees Cooper Brickman at Ty and Imogen’s wedding. When she steps out onto the balcony to get some air and Cooper strikes up a conversation and goes on and on about the woes of his younger sister, Harley instantly falls into nanny mode. This is a conversation she is comfortable with having worked as a nanny for years. Harley loves kids and is great at her job. Chatting it up with Cooper Brickman is just icing on the cake!
When Imogen calls for all the single girls to come out to catch the bouquet, Harley’s identical twin, Charity, yanks her onto the floor. Harley did not miss Cooper’s hot perusal of her sister. Though identical, Charity oozed sex while Harley simply did not. After Charity catches the bouquet, all the single men line up and it’s no surprise when Cooper catches the garter. He then makes sure that Charity knows he’s interested when he places the garter much higher than necessary on her thigh.
But Charity has had it with men assuming she’s easy and stomps off the floor to find her sister Harley. Harley saw the exchange and is equally upset that men seem to see her as the maternal type and are just not interested in her sexually. She and Charity are identical and just because she doesn’t flaunt her boobs doesn’t mean that she isn’t interested in getting busy with a hot guy like Cooper Brickman.
On a whim, Charity and Harley decided to swap dresses and pretend to be each other for just one night. Charity wants to be seen as the intelligent woman that she is for a change and not just a hot piece of ass while Harley wants very much to be that hot piece and she wants to melt all over Cooper Brickman.
Whew! Much longer set up than I usually like to use in a review, but it’s the basis for the whole story, which had its moments but was disappointing at the same time. As this is the final book in McCarthy’s Fast Track series, I expected more from it and it simply did not deliver.
My first issue is that while the focus is almost solely on Harley and Cooper, there is, in the background, Charity’s huge crush on Jeff Sterling. At the wedding, when Harley and Charity switch dresses, we get the play by play of what happens between Cooper and Harley (pretending to be Charity), and we get just a teeny tiny scene where we know that Charity, pretending to be Harley, has struck up a conversation with Jeff. Jeff is much older, late 40’s I think to Charity’s 27 and he’s also her boss. Yet Charity makes it clear that she is done with boys and wants a man and she’s set her sights on Jeff. While I understood that this was to be Cooper and Harley’s story, it was clear to me from the beginning that the author was setting up Jeff and Charity as well, yet we get next to nothing on them until the last few pages.
Secondly, twins are generally close-identical twins even more so. Harley and Charity have been in previous books and they are as close as sisters can be. So I didn’t buy that Harley would not tell her sister the details of her night with Cooper. Especially since she DID have amazing sex with Cooper, but tells Charity that they just “made out”. So, for much of the book Cooper is confused and uncomfortable and feeling like a pervert because he develops feelings for Harley but feels awful because he thinks he slept with her sister. I get that this was the basis for the main plot of this story, the whole switcheroo thing, but if this was the case than I would have expected more awkward moments between Cooper and Charity.
Conflict is introduced in the form of Cooper and MJ’s mother who blows into town with her current boy toy and causes trouble for Cooper and Harley. I really disliked this. I feel it could have been left out entirely and the story would not have been lacking at all. I felt that the issue of Harley and Charity switching identities would have been more than enough to cause a little grief at an appropriate time in the story, but in this book it is handled a bit too easily and everyone is forgiven for their deception and we get two HEAs instead of just one.
Having said all of that, if I look at this as just the next book in this series, the story of Harley and Cooper is well done. McCarthy does an awesome job with the character of Mary Jane (aka MJ), Cooper’s little sister. She is older beyond her years and the fact that she has been left to her own devices with nearly unlimited funds makes for some very humourous moments. We see many sides to MJ after Harley moves in to be her “nanny”. We also see a different side of Cooper. He too has much character growth as the responsibility of having his sister with him makes him see what was missing from his life. He enjoys the domesticity of having someone to come home to at the end of the day. He enjoys simple things like grocery shopping and making a meal together. In short, he realizes what is really important and he wants Harley in his life.
As a final book in a series, this book fails in my opinion. I would have expected much more in the way of previous couples getting some page time and a “where are they now” look into their lives. To be fair, there is a bit of this. The story starts with Ty and Imogen’s wedding, so all previous characters are in attendance and we do get updates via their conversation, I just wanted more details.
I struggled with what to rate this book because as a stand alone, I enjoyed it-but as a finale, not so much. If this was just a story about Cooper and Harley, I’d easily give it a B–but it wasn’t. Charity and Jeff’s story is barely on the periphery and left me wanting. I didn’t feel that sense of closure, having a good idea of all our previous couples still floating in that cloud of happily ever after. I did love Cooper and Harley and MJ and I’ll miss this series, so I’m splitting it down the middle.
Rating: C-
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