Review: "The Ripple Effect" by Maggie North

The Ripple Effect by Maggie North
Published June 2024 via St. Martin's Griffin
★★★★

Stellar needs a financial lifeline, and fast. Lyle, better known as McHuge, needs the optics having a doctor on board his boat—well, boats—will bring. Never mind that Stellar more or less ghosted Lyle last year, or that their chemistry is unresolved, or that "trip doctor" quickly becomes "trip fake fiancée". They'll make it work. And nobody will be the wiser...right?

I usually rail against TikTok tropes in romance novels, but I guess they're wearing me down. The Ripple Effect features #grumpyandsunshine, #onebed, #secondchance, #fakedating, #bigmansmallwoman (I don't know what hashtag that one should be, actually, but I understand that it's a thing) and probably a bunch of other tropes that I don't remember, and yet I didn't...mind? Not sure what has happened to me, but let's run with it.

Into the woods—as a genre (or subgenre? subsubgenre?), not the musical—is right up my reading alley, so when I saw that this was an into-the-woods type of book, I was sold. Points for some intersectionality; maybe minus some points for this not being a very outdoorsy kind of trip, all things considered (think tents big enough to stand up in with real furniture and chef-cooked meals, not sleeping bags and oatmeal cooked in the bag it came in); plus points for some red herrings that did their job; minus points for the whole 'he is so big and she is so little' thing (rubs me the wrong way for reasons that do not originate with this book); and I don't feel like doing math but we're still in the black by the end of the book. I'm not entirely sold on the conflict—it occasionally felt as though there was one too many thing going on—and I'm struggling to imagine that Stellar couldn't find another job that better used her skills, even under the circumstances—even if local practices and so on had their doors closed to her, the COVID era has opened up a world of remote work, including for doctors. That said, I enjoyed the dynamics between the members of the inaugural group, and of course between Lyle and Stellar. I wouldn't be sorry if Sloane featured in a future book, either.

This was a super quick read, ideal for a day when I wanted something that was heavy only on the tropes. A mood read, but I'd return to the author for other mood reads. Into the woods it's time to go...

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