what I’m reading: the tourist attraction by sarah morgenthaler.

Graham Barnett owns and operates The Tourist Trap, a burger joint in Moose Springs, Alaska (he also sells reindeer dogs). The only things you need to know about Graham are that he’s grumpy and he hates tourists. Enter Zoey Caldwell, a tourist fulfilling her bucket list dream of visiting Alaska. When the two cross paths, they are instantly smitten.

This book was okay. It’s basically about Graham and Zoey who meet at Graham’s diner and are instantly attracted to each other. Graham shows Zoey around the town and they do some touristy things. Despite the fact that she is leaving in two weeks, they fall in love, and then she leaves, and then Graham asks her to stay, and then she does. Throw in some side plot about Graham’s blind dog, a moose that has kind of become the diner mascot, and Zoey’s friend trying to save the town and you get a meh story.

There’s just, not a lot of plot. Maybe I have been reading too many thrillers or crime stories because I was about 30% into this book and I just kept thinking, where is the conflict? Where is the action? Am I going to have to spend 100 pages reading about Graham and Zoey on a whale-watching trip?

Also, I really did not like the Graham character. I think the author was trying to make him cute and charming but I found him annoying. He shows up at Zoey’s room at 6:45 in the morning to go on a surprise breakfast outing (who does that!). When they are on the bus to the whale watching trip, they have to sit apart from each other so he just yells things at her the entire ride and makes up this story about how they are married to tell to the people sitting across from him. He also runs his diner that is super popular, to the point that people line up outside before it is opened waiting to get in, but he’s completely rude to everyone and serves them whatever he wants (he does only have burgers and reindeer dogs on the menu) and just tells people to get out when he wants to close? Additionally, there was a definite overuse of pet names. I got so tired of reading “gorgeous” and “Zoey-bear”.

But the worst was the ending when he basically storms the airport and jumps over the security checkpoint to run and stop Zoey from leaving. And he just says “I’m probably going to get arrested.” You think???? Spoiler – he does not get arrested, nor does he appear to have to pay any sort of fine.

Here are all the things I googled while reading this book:

• What does a border collie look like?
• What does reindeer meat taste like?
• Are there narwhals in Alaska?
• Are narwhals whales?
• What time do fireworks start in Anchorage?
• What is the penalty for trespassing at an airport?

I read this book because I love all stuff Alaska but it was definitely underwhelming. The dog was the best part.

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