Coffee Date

“Coffee Date” by K. Lynn
Synopsis: Alice is finally happy with her body and her life—except for the part where revealing she’s trans winds up leaving her hurt and abandoned over and over again. She’s decided she’s done making herself miserable by looking for love.
Love finds her anyway, in the form of Hank, the new guy at her local coffee shop. He’s sweet, friendly, charming… and will probably turn out like all the rest. Determined not to shatter the fantasy and lose him before she has to, Alice holds fast to her secrets.
But if the truth doesn’t ruin everything, the lies will, and it seems no matter which choice she makes Alice is set for just one more heartache.

*******

3 out of 5 stars

This is such a gem for me. It’s very difficult to find transgender fiction, and this little love story was short and sweet.

The story begins with Alice reliving a moment from her past when she was in transition in college. Her memories of one person in particular making her life miserable as she moved from Al to Alice and her thoughts of disappointing her family rang true.

The story quickly moves to her chance meeting at her favorite coffee shop where she meets the new barista, Hank. After some intense flirting, he asks her out. Alice has been hurt before and doesn’t want to lose Hank, but is afraid her past will scare him away.

What I liked: This was a very sweet love story, and I felt that it was very sensitive regarding Alice’s transition. She enjoys her work as a librarian and I appreciated the back story behind that. Hank is more hurt by Alice’s lies than by her past which was a nice touch.

What I didn’t like: Hank reacts predictably when Alice tells him the truth and it’s not in a good way. The sex scene between them felt a little perfunctory and forced and left me feeling nothing.

Please keep in mind this is an extremely short book, and should be more accurately described as a novella. It was well written and it was nice to find a happy ending here where so often we don’t see that in real life.

ARC provided by NetGalley