[Short Story Review] Coffee Date By K. Lynn & Starbucks Mocha Flavored Coffee
Title: Coffee Date
Series/Universe: Standalone
Author: K. Lynn
Publisher: Less Than Three Press
Publication date: July 1st 2015
Page Count: 44 pages
Age Rating: Adult (language and explicit sexual scenes)
How I got my hot little hands on it: Received an ARC to review
Publisher’s page: Coffee Date
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.
My Review
Alice walks into her favorite coffee shop one morning and meets Hank, a flirty new employee. Flirting over coffee soon turns into a string of dates and everything is going great between the two, except Alice is scared to tell her new boyfriend that she’s trans.
This short story is super short and felt kind of rushed in parts. Alice and Hank’s relationship was kind of glossed over in the getting-to-know-each-other stage and suddenly they’re getting serious. I liked Alice (she’s a librarian who loves coffee – a girl after my own heart), but I felt Hank was kind of one dimensional, so I never cared about him one way or another outside of how he reacts to the news Alice tells him. Small spoiler – Hank’s kneejerk reaction is kind of, well, jerky. There’s a Happy-For-Now ending to the story, but I wasn’t really feeling it – he really said some mean things to her and I felt like she was too quick to forgive him.
While I really wished some things had been better fleshed out in Coffee Date, and that Alice had made Hank grovel a bit in the end, I did like the main character and I enjoyed the story overall.
The romance between Alice and Hank begins over a cup of Alice’s usual coffee order: a café mocha. For a great mocha flavored coffee, try Starbucks Mocha Flavored Coffee – this coffee is wonderfully, decadently chocolatey without need for cream or sugar to bring out its sweet chocolate flavor.
