REVIEW: On the Rocks (book) by Georgia Beers

On the Rocks is a contemporary f/f romance, the second in Beers' Swizzle Stick Romance series. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Second grade teacher Vanessa Martini isn't wild about having to call the parents of one of her students. She's a teacher because she likes kids - if she never had to deal with their parents, she'd be fine with that. But something is going on with little Oliver Chapman, and he's been acting out in class a lot lately.

Grace Chapman is exhausted and feels like she isn't measuring up in any area of her life lately. The owner of the flower shop she works for is difficult, to put it mildly, and her personal life isn't going any better - she and her husband are divorcing, and she's tired of her mother constantly acting like the failure of her marriage is all her own fault. Then there's her son, Oliver, who's taking the divorce badly. She knows he loves her, but that doesn't stop it from hurting when he says something angry and hurtful or acts like he'd prefer to be with his father.

Vanessa, Oliver's teacher, feels like yet another source of judgement in Grace's life. As the two of them keep crossing paths, however, they gradually thaw towards each other...and realize that there's a mutual attraction brewing between them.

This is the second book I've read by Beers, and so far my impression has been that her characters are a delight to spend time with. After meeting Vanessa Martini in the first book in this series, I was looking forward to reading her romance. 

Unfortunately, Beers' decision to pair Vanessa off with the almost divorced mother of one of her students didn't quite work for me. Vanessa and Grace were great together, but add in Oliver and, well, he took up more of my thoughts than he should have considering that the focus was supposed to be on Vanessa and Grace. I don't think Beers addressed the issues with him and his emotional upheaval over the divorce enough, and it kind of bugged me that whatever he might have been feeling about the relationship brewing between his mother and his teacher was never addressed on-page, although several characters worried about it.

I also had some issues with how things were handled when Vanessa freaked out after the mother of one of her other students said something snarky about her relationship with Grace. Grace's reaction was justified, but so too, I felt, was Vanessa's, and yet several characters, including Vanessa's own family members, were all like "so what? why do you care what a judgy parent thinks?" Maybe living in Texas colors my viewpoint too much, but I felt like the other characters weren't worrying nearly enough about how things might turn out for Vanessa if that particular parent decided to make trouble.

So yeah, I like Beers' characters, and this book had the advantage of including both a newly adopted dog and a newly adopted cat, but I had some issues with the setup for the romance and wish Beers had gone for something a little less anxiety-inducing.