“Sometimes she looked at him and didn’t know who she was seeing–the boy she had loved, the man she hated or the man who was the boy grown up.”
– Erin McCarthy, The Chase
I’ve been enjoying the ride of the Fast Track series so far and while I like aspects of it, this installment stalled out for me– especially the ending.
Stock car driver Kendall Holbrook is the sole female driver in this year’s stock car championship and after years of work she won’t let anyone shake her driving– including fellow driver and ex-boyfriend Evan Monroe, who laughed at her career ambitions when they were teenagers.
But while Kendall is at an all time high in her career Evan is at an all time low. When Evan needs more sponsors he is paired up with Kendall on a his-and-her deodorant campaign and they discover that maybe moment that broke them up 10 years ago wasn’t what they thought.
This novel just didn’t have the same sense humor the other books had, the only funny parts were when the other characters showed up.
I liked Kendall as a character, who I admit I pretty much saw as a Danica Patrick expy. At 28, Kendall is on the younger side of Fast Track series protagonists and she is just being brought into this community and has to figure out where she belongs. She straddles the world between the women who are the wives, mothers and staff and the men, who are her coworkers.
What left me most unsatisfied about this book was how the ending was tied up like everything was neat and tidy when a lot of things were left unresolved.So, here be spoilers.
—–SPOILERS—–
In the previous book, Hot Finish it’s implied that Evan hooks up with this random girl at a bachelor party and in this book we find out that random girl is pregnant and he may or may not be the father….and by the way he finds this out right after he and Kendall elope.
And then it’s just never fully resolved. We never find out if he is the father. Not to mention that he quits racing after discovering all of this. Like even if Kendall could make all the money he’d still have to pay child support. Would he really make his wife pay his child support ?
And while we are on HEAs, one of the very last moments that happens before the end is Kendall’s friend, a well known race car blogger named Tuesday tells her that her father has terminal cancer. Tuesday is the protagonist of the next book, so I guess we are going to get more of this in Slow Ride, but it was kind of a downer ending.
While it was great to see a female driver in this series it felt like this book was mostly setting up for the next one…which I’ve already started and while it’s definitely more emotional I’m enjoying it.
SIDE NOTE
Also, there is a sex scene in this book that takes place on their lunch. Literally on their lunch. In a hotel room. With like ketchup and French fries and IDK that just seemed rude to the hotel staff.
