Reviewed by Becca

TITLE: Counter Culture

AUTHOR: J.L. Merrow

PUBLISHER: Riptide Publishing

LENGTH: 344 pages

RELEASE DATE: November 4, 2019

BLURB:

Customer service has never been this personal.

Robin Christopher, beleaguered retail worker, isn’t having an easy November. His boss is raising stress levels planning a Black Friday to end all Black Fridays, his family doesn’t understand him, and his best friend thinks his new crush is a hallucination brought on by watching too many episodes of Doctor Who.

Archie Levine dresses in Victorian style and divides his time between caring for his young son and creating weird and wacky steampunk gadgets from bits of old junk—when he’s not looking after his mum and trying to keep on good terms with his ex. The last thing he’s got time for is a relationship, but the flustered young man he met while disembowelling a fridge is proving very tempting.

When his mum’s social conscience is roused by a local store with a cavalier attitude to the homeless, former rough sleeper Archie shares her anger. Little does he know that Robin works for that same store. When Archie finds out he’s sleeping with the enemy, things could cut up very rough indeed. 

REVIEW:

This was a harder story for me and I hate it, because I have always loved J.L. Merrow’s books. I still do, don’t get me wrong. But this one just wasn’t really for me. Most of the characters needed the sticks pulled out of their rears and it just seemed a jumble for me. I felt for Archie and Robin, too, because they are caught up in being interested in each other but there are things going on behind the scenes that either no one knows anything about, or they know and it’s causing a rift.

When Robin first encounters Archie, it’s because he was in a fridge with his legs hanging out and Robin thought the worst. But after he pops up and seems fine, the conversation between them was just weird. They seem to keep bumping into each other in odd places and the more they do, the more things are getting misconstrued. And when Robin’s place of employment makes a big deal for a ad in the paper, it sends things into overdrive. Misunderstandings, miscommunication, and people being buttheads over something they shouldn’t be. It’s caused an uproar and any chance that Robin and Archie had of being together, was now thrown to the wind. If they have any hope of getting together and staying that way, they are going to have to figure out how to get past all the mess going on in their lives. But when it involves loved ones and wrongs that were done, how are they going to get past it all?

Robin and Archie just have had a mess of things since the minute they laid eyes on each other. They were so interested in each other, but they knew nothing about the other and when they start seeing things, they are always with certain people and miscommunication and misunderstandings go overboard. I hate that too. People are always so quick to jump to the wrong conclusion instead of trying to actually talk and figure things out. But I feel bad for them too, because every time they did try to talk to each other, they both seemed to get tongue tied. Which made it worse. It was a hard situation they were in. Archie wanted to protect his family when he finds some things out, and Robin felt like he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. It just seemed like there was no way out for any of them. It was a mess. 

It’s a good book. Angsty for sure. And the steampunk parts for those fans, are great. It just wasn’t the book for me. I still love J.L. Merrow. I hope you all will read this and form your own opinion. It deserves a chance.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: 

riptidepublishing

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