Review: "Work It Out" by Eva Siedler

Work It Out by Eva Siedler
Published January 2024 via Entangled
★★★

To get the movie role he's after, Jake needs visible abs—and to get visible abs, he needs a plan. Luckily, that's what Rayah offers: since the end of her gymnastics career, she's opened Explosion, a resort with a focus on helping clients meet their fitness goals. It's perfect...as long as Jake can hide his health concerns from Rayah. And as long as nothing else goes wrong...

What worked for me: this is a high-energy and fast-paced read, with likeable characters and a bit of quirkiness to keep things interesting. Readers who like to follow characters through a romance series might find some satisfaction here—I can't be sure that there are more books to come, but there's enough setup for a few characters that I wouldn't be too surprised if this isn't the last we see of Explosion. For some inexplicable reason I am fond of gym-setting romance, and I love that we see a health condition that doesn't show up much in fiction (and that the author is writing from her own experience). It's also a book that runs high on big feelings and emotional conversations, which, while not entirely my thing, is better than stoic heroes who are determined to be the manliest men who ever did manly-man (and will likely be an unreserved plus for those who are in it for the feels).

What didn't work so well: there's a lot going on. In addition to Jake's health, there's Rayah's backstory, which is pulled from real-life USA Gymnastics stuff and sometimes becomes the...frontstory? Is that a word? There's drama with Rayah's best friend and with Jake's costar and with Rayah's father; there's a subplot regarding the small town where Explosion is located and a subplot about a skeevy insurance agent and at least three love triangles that I was sure of, but possibly more. (Oh, also, Pierce should have been fired, probably more than once.) I was left thinking that the least exhausting thing about Explosion would be the exercise, and...I wouldn't have minded a significant trimming of subplots to calm things down a bit.

What was overdone: The use of 'cupcake' as an endearment could have been dialed back 50% and it still would have felt frequent. And...I read or heard something recently talking about the emphasis some romance novels put on tiny heroine + big hero, and holy moly but that is here in spades. It's not a new thing—skim just about any romance novel from the 60s and you'll find plentiful descriptions of the heroine's tiny waist or slim build. And here at least it makes a certain amount of sense; Rayah is a former gymnast, and it's unusual at best for an elite gymnast to be anything other than compact. But when even the heroine herself is thinking The bed's a king, and I'm ever so little (loc. 1335*), the description has become a caricature of a caricature. 80% fewer references to how little she is and we'd still have gotten the point.

The positives outweighed the negatives here, and I sped through the book in a couple of days—it was one where I suspected from the cover alone that I'd enjoy the story, and I did. But I hope that if this turns from standalone to series, the next books will get a bit more streamlining.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.