Galahad in Jeans tries throws together a pretty typical trope: a reporter with an agenda/prejudice have to go do a story on something counter to his/her beliefs and gets shackled with the subject whom s/he falls in love with. The execution was not bad, and the characters are complex enough to sustain the narrative, but it's a slow simmer at best.
Carla was assigned by her magazine editor to profile the "Perfect Southern Gentleman" contest winner... Robert "Beau" Beauregard Galahad Benedict. Except Carla doesn't believe in the myth of the Perfect Southern Gentleman. The fact her editor Trevor hates her and would do anything to ruin her (with a smile) is well known. But everything she learned about Beau shows that Beau really is a perfect gentleman, humble, self-effacing, generous, charming, heroic when needed. The worst part? He refused to admit to being a gentleman. So how can Carla convince him to change his mind about an interview? How can she shadow someone for a week if he refused to cooperate?
As you can expect, a romance buds between the two, in the "enemies turned into lovers" trope, but the relationship was more complex than that, as both come with stereotypes... the southern farmer gentleman vs. the northeastern city girl. But then we get into the opposites attract trope. Add some natural disasters like flash floods, the evil editor pushing her buttons, and there's bound to be more complications. Add in another layer of the writer's fight with her editor (who's a misogynistic control freak) and things get tense indeed. Darkest hour was left on almost a cliff-hanger where the ending was teased but left unsaid until later. You'll also have to add the part of southern history reenactment as that's just perfect for seduction.
All in all, the novel grows on you as you read it and by the end, you will fall in love with the Benedicts... but you will have to slog through the slow parts.
Category: Contemporary
Primary Plot: Cynical reporter from the cities meets the perfect southern gentleman down in Louisiana
Tropes: enemies to lovers, reporter, evil boss, different worlds
Overall Rating: 4/5
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